


Backing Up

by LindaO



Series: Chaos AU [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 13:32:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 60,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LindaO/pseuds/LindaO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years ago, Lionel Fusco had no choice. To save a young girl’s life, he shot and killed her gun-wielding father in front of her.</p>
<p>Years later, Harold Finch had no choice. To save a teenager’s life — and to keep her out of IFT’s servers — he kidnapped a heroin-addicted hacker and committed her to rehab against her will.</p>
<p>Now the young woman’s own attempts to make good choices have gone terribly wrong, and her Number’s come up. To save her life for a third time, Fusco, Finch, and John Reese will need to examine her choices – and their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some language, violence, drug use, adult situations. Trigger warning: this story contains references to deviant pornography, including bestiality and pedophilia. They are phrased in terms that could be aired in prime time, but may be upsetting to some readers. Also, there is a reference to bookcase porn, but it hardly even makes Finch blush. 
> 
> Season One, before Firewall.

  1. “It’s a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful.”   Hiromu Arakawa  
  
 **September 1998**



Lionel Fusco was sweating his ass off. It was late September, supposed to be fall, but NYC hadn’t gotten the message. It was hot as hell. People were going crazy in the heat. Fist fights, robberies, stolen cars. Murders, of course. And now this nutjob in the bar with a shotgun. The traffic helicopter had set him off. He thought it was going to dust him with Agent Orange.

From what Fusco heard about this guy, he’d come back from Vietnam with a bad case of crazy and been trouble ever since. Petty theft, fights, drunk and disorderly, vagrancy, trespassing. Check kiting. And drugs, of course. Lots of drugs. Typical street loser. But this time he had hostages. So they were standing around in the glaring sun, with bullhorns and SWAT guys, trying to talk some sense into a lunatic.

Whoever had named this bar The Happy Hours hadn’t figured on days like this.

And whoever had decided cops should wear black uniforms, Fusco thought, deserved to burn in hell.

“Hey, Fusco,” the lieutenant called. “Take a squad, run up to St. Mary’s.”

“What?”

“They’ll meet you out front. Bring the girl back. Hurry up.”

“Wait … what?”

“Move it, Fusco!”

“Okay, okay.” Still muttering, Fusco got in the car and started it up. The a/c didn’t work, but at least some air came in the windows while he was rolling. He turned east, wondered if he should run lights. But St. Mary’s was only twelve blocks away. He just drove fast. “I hate nuns,” he muttered. They scared the hell out of him. Then he grinned to himself. That was sort of the point of nuns, wasn’t it?

There was only one nun waiting outside for him. Beside her was a Catholic schoolgirl. White blouse, plaid skirt, knee socks, saddle shoes. Blue eyes, glasses. Short brown hair, tucked back in one of those fabric hair bands. Maybe twelve years old. Her plain blue backpack was almost bigger than she was.

Fusco stopped the squad car and reached to open his door. The nun didn’t wait. She opened the passenger-side door and the girl got in, settled the book bag on her lap. The nun slammed the door. Fusco shut his own door. “Hey there.”

“Hey,” the girl muttered.

“I’m, uh, I’m Fusco. What’s your name?”

“Chrissy.”

“Chrissy. That’s pretty.”

She looked at him like he was an idiot or possibly a pervert. Fusco put the car into gear and drove.

The girl pulled what looked like a brand-new laptop computer out of her bag and opened it. At the stoplight, Fusco looked over. “They teachin’ computers in school now?”

She gave him the same look. “No.”

“Oh.” He nodded. “So, um, you ever been in a squad car before? You can run the lights if you want.”

She shook her head, not looking up from the computer. “I need to be back by 9th period. I have a chemistry test.”

Fusco frowned. “You know your dad’s in trouble, right?”

“I know.”

“You don’t mind my sayin’, you’re awful calm about it.”

She sighed. “Not my first rodeo, Officer.”

“Huh.” He looked at the girl again. Maybe fourteen? Her dad must have been crazy way before she was even born. She was skinny, all arms and legs, just barely starting to develop. But she had a look to her. Might turn into one of those girls that would drive all the Catholic boys crazy in a few years. Heartbreaker, when she filled out. Right now she was a skinny little snot. “I’m guessin’ they sent somebody else to get your mom.”

“Won’t do any good. She’s drunk.”

“How do you know?”

“She’s always drunk.”

Fusco shrugged. So maybe the little snot had some cause for the attitude. He stopped the car in front of Happy Hours. She put her computer away and got out, put the backpack down next to the squad, walked through the police line and over to the lieutenant like she did it every day.

“Hey, Chrissy,” he said.

“Hey. What’d he do now?”

“He’s got hostages.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“Hey,” Fusco said, out of reflex, “watch your mouth.”

She gave him that look again. For a kid, she had the womanly ‘don’t be a dumbass’ look down cold. It was the exact same look his wife gave him. “And a gun, I suppose.”

“Took a sawed-off from under the bar.”

 “Freakin’ fabulous.” The girl turned to the bar, put one hand on her practically non-existent hip. “Dad, what the hell are you doing?” she shouted.

There was a moment of silence, and then the man with the gun called, “Chrissy? That you?”

“Who the hell else would it be? What are you doing?”

“There were choppers, Chrissy. They were coming for us. They were going to dust us.”

“Traffic copter,” the lieutenant told her. “He thinks they were spraying Agent Orange.”

“Christ.” She shook her head. “Give me the damn bullhorn.”

He reached for it, paused. “Don’t be swearing on the horn, Chrissy. People got their windows open.”

“Whatever.” She took the bullhorn with both hands. “Dad, you got to let those people go.”

Fusco pulled the lieutenant back a step. “You’re kidding, right? You’re gonna let a kid negotiate with a guy that’s holding a bar full of hostages?”

“There’s only four hostages.”

“Four, yeah. Well, okay. That makes it better.”

“Look, Fusco, we’ve done this before. He’ll listen to her. She can get him out.”

From inside the bar, the gunman called, “Chrissy, get out of there. It’s not safe. The dust will get you. Get inside. Get inside!”

“Dad. Mr. Zubeck never did anything to you. Let him go.”

There was another pause. “What?”

“Zubeck. He’s been good to you, Dad. Let him go.”

“What?”

“Let him go.”

“Oh.” There was another pause, and then the front door opened and a large man with a big mustache came out. He blinked in the bright light. One of the uniforms grabbed him and pulled him out of the line of fire.

“And the rest of them,” Chrissy called. She dropped the bullhorn down to her side; it was too heavy for her skinny arms to hold up any longer.

In a minute, the other three hostages came out.

“Good job, Chrissy,” the lieutenant said. “Now get him to put the gun down.”

She started to lift the horn, then just put in on the ground and walked around the shelter of the squad car closer to the bar. “Hey, hey,” Fusco called. “Get back here.” He followed her, though it put him out in the open.

The lieutenant moved up with him. “It’s okay. He won’t shoot her.”

“Will he shoot _us_?”

“Dad,” the girl called out, “put the gun down. Come on out.”

“Chrissy?”

“I’m here, Dad. We’re going to get you some help, okay?”

“There were choppers, Chrissy.”

“I know.”

“I thought … I thought it was back then. You know.”

“Dad, put the gun down.”

He came to the open doorway of the bar. He still had the shotgun in his hand, but it was down at his side.

“Put the gun down,” the lieutenant called. “Come on, Tommy. Put it down.”

“Chrissy?” The man sounded tired, scared.

“I’m right here, Dad. Put the gun down. I gotta get back to school.”

“I know, Chrissy. You do good in school. I’m proud of you. Always been proud of you.”

He took a step into the sunlight.

Something changed. Fusco saw it in the girl first. She’d been calm, cocky, almost bored. Suddenly she was standing up straight, like someone had run a lightning bolt through her spine. She looked scared. “Dad.”

Fusco drew his weapon but kept it low. The lieutenant did the same.

“It’s no good, Chrissy. You should be in school.”

“Then put the damn gun down so I can get back there.” Her voice shook for the first time.

He took another step out. Fusco felt the sweat run down his back. The guy was only fifteen feet from them now, fifteen feet from two cops and a young girl, all out in the open, and he still had the shotgun. “Put the gun down,” he called.

“No good. It’s no good.” He took another step. “You do so good in school, and you gotta spend all your time takin’ care of me. I tried, Chrissy. I tried. But it’s just no good. It’s no good. How you ever gonna learn anything this way? It’s no good.”

“It’s okay, Dad.” Her voice cracked; she stopped to clear her throat. Went on talking like she wasn’t scared out of her mind. “You took hostages this time. They’re going to put you away, they’re going to get you some help. Real help this time, Dad. I promise. Just put the gun down.”

“That’s right, Tommy,” the lieutenant agreed. “We’ll send you away somewhere to get some help. I know you don’t want to hurt anybody. Just put the gun down.”

“Just stop right there,” Fusco said.

“Dad. Dad.”

Tommy looked up at them. He seemed sane now, seemed to know where he was. “Ah, Chrissy,” he said sadly. “I love you, baby. My beautiful Chrissy.”

Fusco raised his gun. Time slowed to a dead crawl. He was freezing cold.

“Shit,” Chrissy whispered. “Stop him.”

“Close your eyes, Chrissy.”

“Dad, _don’t_.”

“I love you, Chrissy. Close your eyes.”

As abruptly as time had slowed, it suddenly flashed forward. The barrel of the shotgun started to come up. Fusco grabbed the girl with one hand, aimed his gun with the other. Squeezed the trigger and shouted, “Chrissy, close your eyes!”

It was very loud and bright and fast, and then it was slow and hot and Tommy Fitzgerald fell down.

When Fusco’s head cleared – it only took a second – he was looking away from the bar, staring at the girl. He had one hand wrapped around her upper arm, and he’d spun her so he was between her and the shotgun. He started to let go, and then he didn’t. She was looking past him. She hadn’t closed her eyes.

She stared at her father’s body for a long time. He’d fallen forward, so the bullet wounds weren’t easy to see. Fusco glanced around at the other cops and guessed the guy had six, eight holes in him. Somehow he was sure when they sorted it out, it would be his bullet that had killed the man. He hadn’t even been looking when he fired. But Christ, he hadn’t had any choice. Had he?

He waited for the girl to start screaming or crying, or maybe to faint. But she didn’t do any of that. She was pale, and her skin was cold under his hand. She stared at the body. She swayed a little. And then she did the grown woman thing again. She straightened up, pulled out of Fusco’s grip. Looked him square in the eye. And said, “Please take me back to school.”

“I … what?”

Confused, he looked past her to the lieutenant. He didn’t seem to know what to do, either. “Chrissy …”

“I have a chemistry test.”

“Don’t you want to go …” Fusco started. He stopped himself. Go where? See the body up close? Go to the morgue with him? There sure as hell wasn’t any point in hauling him to a hospital. “…home?” he finally finished.

She tilted her head a little. “Why?”

The lieutenant moved. “Fusco, take her back to school.”

“What?”

“Just take her. I’ll call ahead, let them know what happened. Maybe the nuns can … whatever. We’ll get a statement later. Just get her out of here. And then get your ass back here. There’s gonna be a ton of paperwork.”

“Sure. Sure. Whatever.” The girl had to be in shock, Fusco decided. Hell, _he_ was in shock. And her mother was drunk. So yeah, maybe the nuns were the best choice. He took her skinny little arm again and guided her back to the squad car. Opened the door for her. Put her book bag in her lap. Closed the door.

He was sweaty and shaky and didn’t really think he should drive. But it was only twelve blocks. At least they’d have the body covered by the time he got back.

And she’d make it for her damn chemistry test.

Jesus Christ.

He drove a couple blocks, stopped at a light. The girl was staring straight ahead. “You sure you don’t want to go home?” Fusco asked.

“I’m sure,” she answered quietly.

At the light before the school, he said, “I’m really sorry, Chrissy. I wish it could’ve ended better. I’m sorry.”

She looked over at him. Behind her glasses, her blue eyes were calm, dead. A thousand years old. “It was always going to end this way. There’s nothing you could have done.” She shook her head. “I just needed a little more time. Just a few more weeks …”

“For what?”

She went back to staring out the front window and did not answer.

There was a whole gaggle of nuns waiting for her in front of the school. Some of them were crying. “Christ,” she breathed. “Fusco, right?”

“What? Yeah, Fusco. Lionel Fusco.”

“This is not your fault.”

“What?”

She got out of the car. One of the nuns took her backpack; the others folded around her like a cloak of black and white. The girl didn’t seem to notice, or care. She walked toward the school, trailing the adults behind her.

“Jesus Christ,” Fusco said. And then, though it had been years since he’d been to church, he crossed himself and turned it into a prayer. “Look after her.”

  
  


** 2012 **

Harold Finch walked as fast as he could, in the certain knowledge that it wasn’t going to be fast enough. “This was inevitable,” he grumbled.

“I need information, Finch,” Reese snapped back over his earwig. His voice was tight and a little breathless; their quarry had unexpectedly decided to move. Quickly.

With his ex-wife as a hostage.

“I’m twenty minutes from the library,” Finch answered. Even if he called for the car, it wouldn’t save much time. “At least.”

“We don’t have that kind of time.”

Harold stopped and looked around. It was Manhattan; even at midnight on a Saturday there had to be a way to get to a computer. He could break into an office, perhaps. Or bribe a guard at a security console in one of the buildings. Or…

The neon sign glowed like a beacon of hope at the end of the block, with the four letters most precious to him at the moment: WiFi. He hurried toward it.

The cybercafé was called Chaos. The sign on the door, printed in ironic Comic Sans, read:

No Drugs

No Alcohol

No Skateboards

No IE

ABSOLUTELY NO GLITTER

 

Finch shook his head and went inside. The place was grungy and crowded. It smelled of overcooked coffee and unwashed humans. Rock music blasted out of ancient speakers, and the patrons talked loudly to be heard over it. There was a bar to one side, now used for coffee and pastries. A very large man with a mustache leaned on the bar; a smaller companion washed mugs. There were battered tables, stools, chairs. A long counter in front of the windows held six ancient desktop computer towers with fairly new flatscreen monitors. There were pillows on the floor, sagging chairs in front of an empty fireplace, and one highly disreputable couch. There were people, mostly twenty-somethings, sprawled everywhere. It was, in short, a madhouse. But nearly every person had a computer, and he desperately needed one.

Tucked into the front corner was a young woman. She caught Finch’s eye because she was reading a tattered paperback book; she seemed completely oblivious to the bedlam around her. She glanced up at him briefly when the door closed, smiled, then went back to reading.

“I’ve found an option, Mr. Reese.” He scanned the room for the biggest laptop he could find, walked up behind its owner, and held out a hundred dollar bill folded between his fingertips. “I need to use your computer for fifteen minutes,” he said.

The young man looked up through greasy dark hair. “Huh?”

“Fifteen minutes,” Finch repeated, over the music.

“Oh.” The kid hesitated one moment more, then stood up, took the money and his empty cup, and went to the coffee counter.

Finch sat down, hesitated. The keyboard gleamed with grease and he could see crumbs between every row of keys. The girl next to him looked at him curiously, then at his screen. He turned it just a little to obstruct her view. Then he grudgingly touched the keyboard and reached out to his network.

And waited. The café’s WiFi was clearly badly overloaded, and the laptop was junk.

At the center of the room, a large group of young men were playing some kind of on-line game around a big table. There was a great deal of shouting and swearing, and also of keyboard pounding. 

Finch closed his eyes tightly for a moment.

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” a woman said clearly, “he walks into mine.”

Finch looked up. The young woman with the book stood across the table from him. She was cleaner than most of the café’s patrons, and a little older. Dark blue jeans and a bright white shirt. Very long light brown hair, pulled back in a simple ponytail. Blue eyes, bright with interest. And also with recognition.

She held a copy of Brave New World in her hand.

He knew her from somewhere. Or he knew someone like her. For an instant he was severely irritated that he couldn’t place her.  “Pardon?”

“You look like a man in desperate need of a proxy server in a quiet room.”

“Do you have that?” Finch asked with careful hope.

“Give the boy his toy back and come with me.”

Finch’s inborn paranoia flared. He never trusted the kindness of strangers. He glanced at the screen. It still hadn’t succeeded in connecting with his system. There was a terrified woman somewhere in the city and Reese had no way to find her without him. He power-cycled the laptop, stood up, and followed the young woman.

At the back of the bar was a steel door. The woman produced a key and opened it. Finch hesitated, but she went in ahead of him. Reluctantly, calculating his exits even as he moved, he followed her.

The room beyond was a largely empty office. There was an ancient wooden desk against one wall. On it was a flat-screen monitor and a big tower computer. Across the room were two big bookcases and an overstuffed love seat. There was a window, with bars on the outside, and a second doorway, open.

“Give me one minute to clear this,” the woman said. She sat down at the keyboard.

Just like that, Finch thought. No questions asked. His hypervigilance went into overdrive. He fought to seem unconcerned.

He looked around the room. In contrast to the café, the office was neatly organized. One of the bookshelves was full of paperbacks; in most cases there were multiple copies of the same book. On the other shelf were stacks of spiral notebooks, printer paper, and assorted totes of other office supplies, all neatly labeled. Finch frowned; this coffee shop couldn’t use that many supplies in a decade. He looked closer. One entire box was full of pencils; another of basic calculators. The books, he realized, were all titles commonly taught in high school lit classes. They weren’t office supplies; they were school supplies.

He moved back and glanced through the second doorway. The store room beyond was entirely lined with heavy steel shelving. They were completely – and very neatly – full of computer equipment. There was everything from monitors to towers, half a dozen laptops, and totes full of spare parts, all labeled. Motherboards, power supplies, DVD drives, CD drives, ports, cables, mice, keyboards, cameras, speakers, power strips.

The young woman glanced at him. “If you need more hardware, help yourself.”

“You don’t have a Xerox Alto back there, do you?”

She raised one eyebrow. “No. But there’s a punch card reader in the corner.”

Finch looked at her. The eyes. Something about the eyes; he should remember her, but the eyes were wrong. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do I know you?”

She smiled gently. “You used to. In another life.” She stood up, gestured to the chair. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“Green tea?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“One sugar. Please.”

“I’ll be right back.” She went out, leaving the door open behind him.

Finch sat down and did a quick inventory of the computer system. It was much, much more powerful than the laptop he’d been trying to use, and the internet connection went through immediately. He took a deep breath. He could work with this.

He took a look at the system activity. The woman had just disabled the keylogging and other tracking features that the box apparently defaulted to. She’d also masked the IP address. As far as he could tell in a hurry, he was alone on the computer.

_Who was she?_

Save the victim first.

He reached out to his own network. The connection was almost immediate. Carefully he logged into his periphery. He wasn’t about to give his hostess, or anyone else, a free shot into the whole network. Just what he needed, the bare minimum. What he needed first was cell phone tracking.

The woman returned, set a steaming mug down at his elbow. She also put his hundred dollar bill down. “He could keep that …” he began.

“No,” she said firmly. “Trust me, he’d only get into trouble. I gave him a free coffee and a scone. Just call it even.”

Behind her, a man yelled, “Scottie, we’re rebooting the house server in five.”

“Do it,” she called back. “You’re not on the house server,” she assured Finch. “Stay as long as you like. I’ll shut the door; you can lock it if you want. Call me if you need me.”

“Thank you,” Finch said. He watched her out, then stood and locked the door behind her. It had a standard deadbolt; she had a key and could open it from the outside, but she probably couldn’t trap him in here. That, at least, was comforting.

He didn’t have time to be this cautious. He sat down again and keyed the tracker with one hand, dialed his phone with the other. “Mr. Reese?”

“Tell me you have something, Finch.”

“I have a computer. That’s a start.” His hands flew over the keyboard. “And I have … there. Mrs. Frollich’s cell phone tracked. Sending it now.”

He hit send and sat back. Maybe it would be that easy. Probably not. They’d had very little time on this one; when John had located Maria Frollich, her ex-husband was screaming at her. John had confronted him and he’d fled. Reese had called for Finch to get the woman to safety while he pursued him. But before they could put that plan in motion, Rob Frollich had doubled back and taken her.

He watched for a moment. The signal from the phone was moving north. Reese was closing on it. It should be all that he needed.

Finch glanced at the tea. It was steaming, served in a real mug. He probably shouldn’t drink it. Candy from strangers. But if she meant to harm him, she’s already had ample opportunities. He sniffed the tea carefully. It smelled fine.

So had the drink the woman who was not Jordan Hester had given him.

He put the mug down.

He could almost hear Nathan Ingram’s voice. _A pretty girl brings you a cup of tea and you immediately become suspicious. What’s wrong with you, Harold?_

What about the woman had reminded him of Nathan?

Another life.

The part of him that remembered her, the part he couldn’t access consciously yet, told him that the tea was fine. He considered for a very long moment. There were very few things that he trusted in the world, but his own instinct was one of them. He picked up the tea and drank.

It was hot and strong and very good.

 ***  
  
Reese moved through the night silently. He held his phone in his hand; the tracking signal said that Mrs. Frollich’s cellphone was just ahead, to the right. 

He didn’t like being surprised. He’d been surprised when Rob Frollich had doubled back and snatched his ex-wife, and he’d been more surprised how fast they’d been able to move on foot. If the woman had put up any resistance at all she could have slowed him down. But maybe Frollich had a weapon and she was frightened enough to run with him.

In any case, Reese meant to resolve the situation. Soon.

He stopped at the mouth of the alley and listened. It was silent. He looked at the tracking map; the target phone was no longer moving. He put his phone away and drew his weapon. Very quietly, he stepped into the alley.

There was no gunfire. Reese stood still, feeling the air. In five seconds he knew. He was alone.

There were two access doors from the buildings, but neither of them looked like they’d been forced. He glanced up, but there was no one on the fire escapes or the roofs. Mr. and Mrs. Frollich were gone.

He moved further into the alley. Near the far end, on the left wall, he could see evidence of a scuffle in the dirt. Maria Frollich’s phone was on the ground.

Reese crouched and examined the disturbed spot. Definitely two people. No blood. The phone was an older model, large and heavy; it might have fallen out of her pocket while they struggled. It was in plain sight, three feet from the wall. If Frollich had ditched it on purpose he would have thrown it in a dumpster or out of sight. 

But without her phone, he couldn’t continue to track Maria.

Reese stood up and touched his ear piece. “Finch? Find me somewhere else to look.”

 

 ***  
  
Finch wished he’d brought out more screens and keyboards when the woman had offered them. His view was cramped on the single screen. But at least he wasn’t trying to do this on a greasy laptop. “Until two weeks ago Mr. Frollich worked on a construction site three blocks north of your current location. He may have taken her there.”

“Worth a try,” Reese answered.

“I’ll look for other options.” He continued to scan through the man’s background. There wasn’t much; until his ex-wife’s number had come up, Rob Frollich had been a perfectly normal citizen. Slightly behind on his child support and his credit card payments, but making an honest effort. Irregular work record, to be expected in the construction industry. Lived in a very small apartment since his divorce. Seemed to be honest on his taxes.

 “I’m at the construction site,” Reese said. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Frollich doesn’t have any family in the city,” Finch said. “He’s not signed up on any social networks, so locating friends will be difficult.” They already knew he had a very cheap cell phone with no GPS tracking. “I’ll see what I can get from surveillance cameras.”

“Let me know.”

 ***  
  
While Reese searched the construction site, Finch hacked into various cameras. It crossed his mind, briefly, that he was committing a crime on someone else’s computer. But it couldn’t be helped. He found a security camera on a building just down the street from the alley, wound the view back. He found the couple. They were leaving the alley, headed north. Holding hands and running. Finch couldn’t see a weapon in the man’s hand, but the woman didn’t seem to be resisting. Maybe he’d it put away. Maybe he’d threatened her.

He swapped to another camera, an ATM two blocks north. He couldn’t find the couple. Finch checked twice, then looked for a camera in between. He found the couple. “Mr. Reese? They’re not at the construction site. They went into the subway.”

“Is she alright?”

“She doesn’t appear to be injured.”

“Find me a direction.”

“Working on it.”

Without thinking, Finch picked up his mug and drank deeply again.  
  
 ***

Reese followed them, camera by camera. It was agonizingly slow, and every minute he was aware that Maria Frollich’s life was in danger. He snapped at Finch, who snapped back. He still didn’t know where his genius had found a computer to work on; he didn’t ask and Finch didn’t volunteer to tell. They were probably both happier that way.

At nearly three in the morning, he found himself standing in front of a large, ugly apartment building. Frollich and his ex had entered the building forty-two minutes before. The woman was probably dead already. But he had to find out.

“How many units, Finch?” he asked wearily.

“Ninety,” Finch answered. His voice was just as grim. “If there ever were interior cameras, they aren’t functioning now.”

“Should I start knocking on doors?”

“Give me a minute.” There was the inevitable clicking of a keyboard in the background. Reese forced the security door and let himself into the lobby. Finally, Finch said, “Try four-ten. Mr. Frollich had a co-worker at his last job named Paul Noles. It’s his apartment.”

He pressed the call button and an elevator opened immediately. “Worth a shot.”

On the fourth floor, Reese looked down the hall both directions before he moved into the open.

“Mr. Reese …” Finch said slowly. “This may not be what we think it is.”

“Liittle late for that, Finch.”

“Maria Frollich’s employer just offered a new insurance package, including life insurance.”

Behind him, the elevator dinged again. Reese stepped down a side hallway and pressed himself against the wall. A man strode past him without noticing and continued down the hall. “And Rob found out he’s the beneficiary?”

“No. The children are. But Maria took out an auxiliary policy on _his_ life. To the tune of a quarter million dollars.”

Reese stepped back into the main hallway and trotted after the man who’d just gone past him. “And when did this policy go into effect, Finch?”

“At midnight.”

As he’d expected, the man stopped at the door to 410 and used his own key to open the door. Reese let him get through the door, then caught him from behind and slammed his head into the doorframe. The man slumped, and the gun fell out of his hand to the ground. John kicked it aside as he entered the apartment.

Maria Frollich was on the couch, on top of her ex-husband. She looked up and screamed, “Help me, Paul, he’s …” Then she stopped, glared at Reese, and pulled her blouse closed. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded coldly.

“Insurance inspector,” he answered. “We just cancelled the policy you took out on your ex-husband.” He moved closer to the couch and looked down at Rob Frollich. “Get dressed, Rob. She doesn’t love you anymore.”

The man looked up at him. “Huh?”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Finch wiped out everything he’d done on the computer. There were still ways that she could recreate it; short of reformatting the hard drive, which seemed rude, it was impossible to entirely prevent that. He did what he could and then rebooted the system. While it shut down, he sipped the last of his tea. It was cold, of course; his hostess had tapped on the door and passed him a fresh mug every hour, but the last refill had been forty-five minutes ago.

None of the tea, as far as he could tell, had contained any poison.

He glanced at the mug. It had a lovely pattern, a reproduction of the 1925 Cugat cover of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. He thought back and realized that every mug she’d brought him had been from the same collection. Out in the café, he remembered, there had been a wide assortment of mugs, nothing matching. But this was a set. The good mugs, the ones she kept for company?

He sent the shop’s address to Reese’s phone. It would take him a few minutes to get there.

Finch knew from shipping labels on boxes in the store room that her name was almost certainly Christine Fitzgerald. That name didn’t ring any bells. He had resisted searching for her identity on her own computer. His intense curiosity – and his paranoia – had run up against his innate sense of propriety, and good manners had won out. Which was not to say he wasn’t going to research her the moment he was back in the library. 

Christine Fitzgerald, whose friends called her Scottie. Who owned a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald mugs. Who read Aldous Huxley.  And whose blue eyes that seemed somehow wrong. He’d known her in another life, she’d said. Under another name, obviously.

He was exhausted, but he would know who she was by sunrise.

The computer came up again. He shut off the monitor, left the box running, and stood up. He stretched carefully; he hurt from his neck to his toes. Then he picked up the mug and unlocked the door.

Gatsby. A light-weight little novel, really, an outsider’s observation of the great doomed romance between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan that …

Finch stopped dead, his hand on the door. For a moment it was hard to breathe. It couldn’t be her. And it had to be. He hadn’t recognized her because of the eyes. Of course the eyes – they weren’t wrong now, but they had been so wrong before. “She survived,” he whispered to himself.

An odd sensation twisted around in his chest, shot tendrils of warmth throughout his body. All the gin joints, she’d said, and it was entirely appropriate. He’d never expected to see her again.

He’d given up on her. For a moment, that memory filled him with shame.

And yet …

“She survived,” he repeated. The shame faded; the warmth returned. Finch smiled. He opened the door and went out into the coffee bar.

The room was unexpectedly quiet and dim. Of course, Finch realized; it was three in the morning. The crowd was gone; the café was closed. Only the girl remained, curled in one of the big chairs by the empty fireplace, a reading lamp over her shoulder and a book in her hands.

Above the hearth, there was a quote painted directly on the wall: _In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance. – Jeanette Winterson._

She blinked up at him. “All done?”

Finch sat down slowly in the chair opposite her. “You’re Daisy Buchanan.”

“I used to be.” She smiled shyly, shrugged. “I still am, once in a while.”

“I should have recognized you.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment that you didn’t.”

Finch nodded slowly. The last time he’d seen her she’d looked dreadful. “You never came back. I thought you were dead.”

“I never came back because I was scared to death.” She put her book down. “And everybody’s _sure_ that you’re dead.”

“That’s a common misconception. And one I’ve taken some pains not to correct.”

He’d forgotten how disconcerting her eyes could be. She seemed to be looking straight through his every façade. Working it out. Her eyes were much like Mr. Reese’s, in a way, unnerving in their intensity and perception. She nodded thoughtfully. “Then I’m just here talking to myself. Don’t worry, it happens all the time.”

“How did you know?” he asked. She cocked her head, puzzled. “When I came in. How did you know what I needed?”

“Ah. Do you want the long version or the short version?”

“I think I’d better have the long one.”

“Okay.” She settled back. “You know hackers, yes? As individuals we’re loners, introverts. Social misfits. But get us behind a keyboard and we gossip like the popular girls in middle school. As long as we’re not face-to-face, we share everything.”

Finch nodded. He knew too well.

“A year or so ago, the community noticed a new presence among us. An entity of enormous skill and power. A phantom who could walk through firewalls unscathed, who could hack into the most secure companies with ease. Who would drain Swiss bank accounts with a glance at his keyboard. Who could topple corporate titans with a keystroke.”

Finch sat very still, kept his expression blank. He could feel his pulse pounding in his temples. Of course they’d noticed. He’d always know the smart ones would notice. 

The woman’s eyes sparkled. “Word went forth that one of the Nine Princes walked amongst us. Based on his behavior, he was most likely Prince Random. He was sometimes chaotic good, but frequently chaotic neutral at best. He seemed to be engaged in some higher calling; he showed no interest in the hackers of the mortal realm. And the wise ones decreed that Random was not to be bothered; no one was to draw his attention to us. It seemed likely that if we did warrant his notice, his wrath would be swift, fierce and wide. So any young hero amongst us who determined to make his bones by hunting Random swiftly found himself kneecapped in the virtual gutter by the elders of the community.

“Shorter version: We’ve been aware of you, we have some idea what you’re up to, we’re awed by your abilities, and not that you need us, but we’ve got your back.”

“I … don’t know what to say,” Finch said. “I can’t remember the last time I heard a Zelazny reference.”

The woman laughed out loud. Her laugh made him smile. So much better than the shouting and cursing she’d done last time. He never thought he’d hear her laugh.

It was still hard to breathe. Daisy Buchanan. He’d been so sure she was lost, many years ago. And she was sitting here in a dim café, safe and healthy and to all appearances happy. She still had a book in her hand and a computer at her fingertips – some things never changed. But everything else about her was different.

“Assuming for a moment,” he began again, “that I am this lost prince of Amber … how did you know it was me?”

“I didn’t,” she answered simply. “Until you walked in here, I had no idea. No one does. But there are only a handful of men in the world who can do what Random does. And if you’re not dead and you’re here in the city, it has to be you.”

Finch took a slow breath. “The number of people who know that I’m one of those few men … may well be limited to the people in this room.”

She understood what he was saying immediately. “Then it’s good that I’m just here talking to myself, isn’t it?”

He trusted no one, ever, not completely, but he believed at once that she would keep this secret. She already had, he realized. For many years. “Thank you.”

“Kind of the least I can do,” she answered softly.

“No, Christine -- it’s Christine now?” She nodded. “You don’t owe me anything …”

“I owe you my life and every good thing in it. And except for that first few weeks of screaming, there has not been a single day, then to now, that I don’t remember that.” She took a deep breath. “And I should have said this a long time ago, but thank you.”

He didn’t begin to know what to say. “I just wanted you to live. Everything else … just live.” Over her shoulder, Finch saw a sedan glide by with its lights off. He stood up. “I have to go.”

She rolled to her feet, snagged a key ring off the end of the bar. “I’ll let you out.”

It was dangerous. So very dangerous.

“Can I give you a ride home?” he offered. “Or call you a cab?”

“Thanks, but no. I live upstairs.” She unlocked the door. “Is Mr. Ingram really dead?”

“Yes.”

She sighed softly. She’d been far closer to Nathan than she’d been to him, at least until the end. “I’m sorry.”

Finch nodded gravely. “Thank you for your help.”

“Will I ever see you again? I mean, in real life?”

He glanced around the dark coffee bar, remembered the crowd and the noise. Chaos was a perfect name for it. It was a good place to get lost. “Are you sure you want to?”

“Yes,” she answered without the slightest hesitation.

“Good. Now that I know you’re here, I’m likely to exploit you ruthlessly.”

She seemed genuinely pleased. “I’m sure that will be highly educational.”

“You have no idea.”

They went outside, stopped under the single light over the front door. “Um, what’s your name these days?”

“You can call me Mr. Finch.”

She nodded.  “Can I call you Atticus when I know you better?”

Clever girl, Finch though. Oh, my clever, literate girl. “If you like. Or Harold, which I’m more likely to answer to.”

“Harold,” she said slowly. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

He took her hand, but shaking it seemed inadequate. He held it for a moment. “Good night, Christine.”

“Good night.”

She didn’t move; she seemed content for a moment just to study him. He felt the odd twisting in his chest again. This woman was here now, alive, because of an action he’d taken – one that he hadn’t been at all sure was right at the time. There had been others, of course, since he’d started chasing the Numbers. Women and men and the occasional child that he and John had saved. But Christine Fitzgerald, who had been Daisy Buchanan, had been before all of them. She was special. Very, very special.

Without thought, he raised her hand and pressed his lips to the back of it. It was a ridiculous gesture, but her face lit up with delight. She giggled, then laughed again. And blushed. Then she drew her hand back gently, went inside, and locked the door behind her.

Finch laughed a little himself as he walked to the car. He slid into the passenger seat. “Mr. Reese.” He couldn’t quite shake the smile. “Have you sorted out Mr. and Mrs. Frollich?”

Reese growled quietly; foolish domestic situations always irritated him. “Who’s your friend?”

“Just someone I used to know.”

“Uhhhh-huh.”

“Actually, she’s the first person I ever kidnapped.”

Reese looked at him. “I thought _I_ was your first, Finch.”

“I’m sorry. I should have broken it to you more gently.”

Reese’s silence, as it often did, spoke volumes. He drove to the end of the block before he turned the headlights on. A very small idea tickled across Finch’s brain and came to rest. He would need to look at it again, closely. But for the moment, a small seed would do. “Mr. Reese, stay away from her.”

There was a second brief silence. “Anything you say, Finch.”

“John. Please.”

“If you want me to stay away from her, Harold, then _you’re_ going to have to tell me why you kidnapped her.”

It was exactly the response he’d expected. Finch looked out the window for a long moment. There had been another night, very much like this one. The same over-baked quality to the air, the same irregular blending of neon and florescent light on concrete, the same tall building drifting past. But this time, instead of leaving a shrieking, dying child raging in the care of strangers, he was leaving a safe and healthy young woman content in her own home. “I suppose for the same reason I kidnap anyone, Mr. Reese.”

“To save her life.”

He nodded. A rare contentment filled him for a moment. “To save her life.”

 ***

** 1999 **

Drug raid. High summer. Hot as hell. The house smelled like pot and piss and God only knew what else.

Fusco moved through the rooms with the other cops, gathering junkies as they went. No one put up much resistance. The dealers were long gone; only the stoners remained behind to get caught up as prisoners in the war on drugs.

In the last room on the left, Fusco found a young boy sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner, playing some computer game on a laptop. “Come on, kid,” he said. “You’re going to jail.”

“One sec,” the kid said vaguely. “I almost won.”

Fusco reconsidered his guess about the kid’s gender. His hair was very short, blue-black with big white streaks, but the voice sounded like a girl. Hell, as skinny as this one was, it hardly made any difference. He reached down and slammed the lid of the computer, then hauled the kid to his/her feet.

“Aww, come on, I almost won.”

“Whatever, kid.” He turned her around and got a good look at her. “Ah, shit.”

“What?” Chrissy said.

Behind her glasses, her pupils were huge. He could tell by her expression that she had no idea who he was. Hell, she probably had no idea who _she_ was. “Shit,” he said again. He dragged her toward the back door.

There were a couple other uniforms there, watching the exit. He didn’t slow down. “I’m takin’ this one out of here,” he barked.

“Kinda young for you, isn’t she?” one jeered.

“Too young,” Fusco said. They didn’t try to stop him. He dragged her onto the nearest side street, stopped under a light so he could get a look at her.

She was as skinny as she’d been the year before, and not much taller. A lot dirtier. And clearly high as a kite. Her eyes were bright, goofy. Fusco felt sick.  He grabbed one arm and pushed her sleeve up. No track marks, not yet. That was something. “Christ, Chrissy, what are you doing out here?”

“I’m not Chrissy,” she said primly.

“You’re not, huh? What’s your name, then?”

“Daisy.” She made it into a little song. “Daaaaaay-sie.”

“Daisy. Sure. What’s that, your hippy name?”

She struggled to stuff the laptop into her shoulder bag. “I coulda’ won,” she complained.

“Sure, kid. Whatever. When was the last time you ate?”

“Huh?” She pushed up her glasses and squinted at him.

“Ate. You know, food?”

“I know food.” She giggled, poked his belly with one finger. “Not as good as you, though.”

Fusco rubbed his forehead. Behind them, the raid was wrapping up. They’d started looking for him pretty soon. He got out his wallet, took out a ten and one of the stupid business cards the department had given him. “Chrissy, here, listen to me. I want you to take this number and keep it. If you get into trouble, you call me, okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

He gave her the ten dollars. “Take this and get something to eat. To _eat_ , right? Don’t buy drugs. Get some food.”

She giggled again, tucked them both into her completely unnecessary bra. “Ooooo-kay.”

“And then I want you to go home. Do you hear me, Chrissy? Go _home_.”

The girl sighed loudly. “Go home, Chrissy,” she mimicked.

“That’s right. Go home.”

“Ooooo-kay.” She started off down the street. Then she stopped and looked back at him. “I coulda’ won, you know.”

“I know, Chrissy. I know.”

She walked a few more steps, and then she started to run, clumsily.

One of the other uniforms came up on him. “You know that kid?” he asked. He clearly didn’t care that Fusco had let her go.

“Used to.” Fusco shook his head. “Always knew she was gonna be a heartbreaker. I just didn’t expect it to go down this way.”

 ***

** 2012 **

Finch spent more than an hour resetting his security. He didn’t rush; it was unlikely that Miss Fitzgerald would come after his systems at all, and certainly not until she’d gotten some sleep. Still, there was nothing in his nature that would allow him not to take protective measures.

The library was quiet; Reese had gone home and the city outside was barely grumbling awake. It was good for once to not be in desperate hurry.

When he was done, he browsed through Christine’s background. The woman was, as he’d anticipated, the sole owner of Chaos. The café had a fairly professional website. The front page had a menu; the coffee and tea options were extensive. They also had pastries and bagels, brought in from other nearby businesses. No catering, no delivery. They had after-school homework hours, Friday gaming nights, a loyalty card program. Quarterly computer tune-up clinics, and semi-annual safety classes. Tips on on-line security and computer maintenance. Literally hundreds of links. A smallish note said that they would happily help with VA and SSA benefit applications. 

Chaos was highly visible on the social networks, but from the content, Finch doubted Christine was doing most of the posting.

He moved on to the woman herself. He was able to learn that she’d changed her name and acquired her GED in 2002. She’d attended college full time for only one semester before she dropped out, but since then, she’d taken courses all over the city. Not full time, and not in any organized manner; she wasn’t working toward any particular degree. Most were computer classes, various specialties, generally advanced level, but there are also random things. Psychology, history, literature. Acupuncture. It looked like she simply signed up for whatever interested her.

She also traveled extensively. In the past year she’d visited New Zealand, Italy, Toronto, and Austin, Texas. He noted with small relief that she’d been out of the country when Delancy was murdered; it almost certainly ruled her out as Root. Someone _could_ run an operation that complex from a distance, but it was unlikely. Still, Christine had the right skill set; she remained on the possibles list in his mind, but settled toward the bottom.

As with her college classes, there didn’t seem to be any definite purpose to her travels. Finch rather liked the notion that she was going wherever her fancy took her.

She had a public library card. Even in the darkest days of her addiction, Finch remembered, she’d still had a library card. She used the current one extensively. He could have spent half a day just looking over the things she read. Maybe he would, some day.

With some reluctance, because books interested him more than finances. he turned to her tax returns. Fifteen seconds after he hacked into the IRS, a textchat message popped up on his screen:

                >SRSLY, RANDOM?

Finch looked at it, surprised. He’d known she was clever. He just hadn’t known she was awake. Finally he typed back:

                >SORRY. >JUST INQUIRING

 

She wrote back:

                >YOU MISSPELLED STALKING.  DON’T YOU EVER SLEEP?

 

Computer chat could be a tricky thing; it was hard to tell emotion without verbal or visual cues. But she didn’t seem very upset to have caught him rifling through the pages of her virtual life.

                >NOT MUCH. YOU?

                >HAVE A PRIVATE BARISTA. DON’T EVEN NEED TO BLINK.

Finch sat back for a moment, considering. When she was fourteen years old, Nathan Ingram had considered her one of the brightest young minds in the city. But the world had changed. Nathan was gone, and his future rock star had settled for running a neighborhood coffee shop with WiFi. She could have been anything, Finch thought. She could have had the world. She’d settled for a tiny corner of it.

But on the other hand – by the time she was seventeen she’d been on the fast track to killing herself with heroin. When he’d caught her hacking into IFT she was severely malnourished, racked with a blood infection, and utterly overwhelmed by her addiction. And yet she was alive, and she was still sharp enough to catch him in mid-hack.

Her life could have gone to either extreme. Instead, she’d landed solidly in the middle. She’d found the truth, the one that Harold had been so long in coming to. There was only one thing that mattered. Before he could think about it enough to stop himself, he typed the question:

                >ARE YOU HAPPY?

Judging by the speed of her response, she didn’t have to think about it.

                >YES

After a moment, she added,

                >BUT WOULD BE HAPPIER IF THE EYE OF SAURON TURNED ELSEWHERE. PLEASE

 

Finch looked at the screen for a moment, bemused. It wasn’t an unreasonable request. Christine, more than nearly anyone, would be aware of exactly how much information he was able to find if he seriously searched. He had no cause – and to be honest, no right. But she hadn’t threatened or demanded. She’d simply asked, politely.

Politeness, in Harold’s view, ought to be rewarded.

He sighed, and then he responded,

                >AS YOU WISH

He shut down the chat, and then he shut down his search. For the time being, at least, he knew enough. If circumstances changed, he could find out more.

And though Christine Fitzgerald had correctly anticipated his virtual search for information about her, she almost certainly would not be watching for John Reese to stalk her in person, which is precisely what Finch comfortably predicted would happen.

 ***

The big man had been strapped to the chair for six hours. He was sweating profusely and smelled awful. His skin looked gray. He seemed disoriented.

Kevin Frey crouched in front of him. “One more time. Where is the hard drive? Where are the files?”

“D’know,” the big man muttered. “D’know.”

“I don’t believe you. I know how much those files meant to you. You’d d never let them go.”

“Gone,” the man in the chair muttered. “They were just gone.”

His eyes were glassy, his breath shallow. An hour ago he’d complained of pain in his chest and arm. It was very likely that he’d had a heart attack. Prompt medical attention might have saved his life. But Frey didn’t care about that. “Where are they?” he asked, one last time.

“G –gone.” Tears formed in the big man’s eyes, rolled down his cheeks. “All g-g-gone.”

“Gone _where_?” Frey screamed. He stood up and loomed over his captive. “Where the hell are they?”

The big man’s breathing changed suddenly. He began to exhale and pause, then to inhale sharply. His eyes rolled back. His skin grew more gray than blue.

Frey ran his hand through his hair, wiped the sweat off his own face. Such a simple thing. Such a simple damn thing, and it had gone so very wrong.

He took out a pocket knife and stripped the ties off the big man. The captive slumped to the floor and grunted. One more breath and he was silent.

So simple, so wrong, Frey thought again. The boss was going to have his ass over this. He had totally screwed the pooch. His cushy job, his beautiful nine-to-five. He was going to be lucky to end up in some backwater desert post after this. Hell, he was going to be lucky to be _alive_ after this.

It wasn’t his fault. It was all set. It should have run perfectly forever. He didn’t even know what had happened. It was …

He shook his head. It didn’t matter. The drive was gone, the files were gone, the site was gone, and the guy who should have had them was dead. But the boss didn’t know any of those things yet. And if he got them back before she found out, he was still golden.

He couldn’t use any of his usual assets. He was on his own. But he could still save his career, if he could pull it off.

  1. He looked at the dead man on the floor one last time. Then he looked around him. The big man had been a horrible housekeeper. There were piles of junk everywhere. Papers, books, files. Why did anyone have this much paper, in this day and age?    



He’s already been through the man’s hard drive; the files weren’t on his computer. Which meant they were stored off-site somewhere. And somewhere in this mess was a link to it. A single line of text, a note, an address.

Frey sighed heavily. It was going to take forever. And he still had other places to look, too.

He needed some cheap help.

And he knew where to get it.

 ***


	3. Chapter 3

John Reese was putting his shoes on when his phone rang. “Good morning, Finch. I’m on my way.”

“Don’t bother coming to the library,” Harold snapped. “Go to Chaos.”

“Is that a literary way of telling me to go to hell?”

Finch was in no mood for humor. “The cybercafé …”

“I know, Finch. What’s the problem?”

“Christine Fitzgerald’s number just came up.”

Reese stood up, checked his gun. “I’m on my way.”

“John …”

“Don’t jump to conclusions, Harold.”

“I haven’t seen the girl in eleven years. Eleven _days_ after I find her she’s in danger. That’s not a coincidence.”

“You’re assuming she’s a victim, Finch.”

There was a very brief silence. “Yes,” Finch admitted. “Yes, I am.” His tone implied that he was not budging from that assessment.

Reese nodded to himself. “I’ll call you when I’m there.”

 ***

Finch’s hands flew over his keyboards. He’d been an idiot. He should have found out everything about the woman that first night. But she’d said please and he’d stopped. Now she was in danger and he was playing catch-up.

He knew, in one part of his mind, that he could not have anticipated this turn of events. That knowledge did not mitigate his irritation.

Reese was right, of course: He had instantly decided that Christine was a victim and not a perpetrator. Given her past, that could be entirely wrong. But without further evidence, he couldn’t bring himself to doubt her.

After all she’d been through, after all she’d survived, Christine Fitzgerald’s life was now threatened, possibly because he’d walked into her coffee bar.

Whatever it took, Finch vowed grimly, he would make sure that no one harmed her.

 ***

Reese circled the block twice before he found a parking spot up the street from the café. He walked away from Chaos and started a wide circuitous stroll around the neighborhood. There was a lot of traffic, both pedestrian and vehicle, but nothing that looked like surveillance to him. He keyed his phone. “I’m here, Finch. Looks quiet so far.”

“Good.” Finch still sounded tense. “I’ve checked every official channel I can access and every enemy I can think of. I haven’t found any mention of the girl.”

“You don’t sound happy about that.”

“I’d rather know where the threat is coming from.” His keyboard clattered. “The ex-Mrs. Frollich and her boyfriend are still in lock-up. Mr. Frollich seems to be at work. I don’t see any of them having the computer skills to have tracked me to the café. “

“No.” Reese paused to watch a delivery truck. There was no sign of the driver. “I know you think this is related, Finch, but until something pops we need to work this like every other Number. Get eyes on the girl and look for threats in her own life. Give me some background.”

Finch did not argue. “She was born on October 26, 1983. Her parents were never married; originally her name was Christine Buchanan. In the summer of 1988 she was a high school intern at IFT. In the fall of that same year her father was killed in a hostage incident with police, best described as suicide by cop. In March, 2000 her mother was killed in a car accident, best described as suicide by drunk driving. By then, as you know, she was already well on her way to destroying her own life. I already told you how that was resolved.

“After the Towers came down, Miss Fitzgerald changed her name and got her GED. She began to take college course and to travel extensively. Beyond that her history is a bit thin until she started her current business. I’m looking at her finances now, and there’s something very wrong. Chaos Café LLC was formed four years ago and it hasn’t turned a profit yet. Miss Fitzgerald doesn’t draw a salary. In fact, she’s put over fifty thousand dollars of her own money into it every year.”

“Laundering?” Reese wondered.

“No. The funds are going back out in wages, salaries, taxes, insurance. No large chunks, everything trackable. And if she were laundering funds, she could do a lot more without attracting attention.”

“Then where’s she getting the money?” 

“That’s a very good question.”

The driver of the delivery truck came out, checked his clipboard, and drove off. Reese continued his stroll until he was across the street from the café. He settled onto the sandstone steps of a closed post office branch and squinted in the morning glare at the smallish, aging building.

He’d been the week before, watching Finch’s mystery woman from the same spot. After the morning commuter rush, just over a dozen old men had arrived. They came separately but sat together on the front patio, clearly long-time companions. They all wore hats, smoked slender, evil-smelling cigars and drank black coffee. They all spoke Russian. Fitzgerald had moved among the tables, chatting with the men and refilling cups from a silver carafe. They’d been teaching her Russian phrases that would have made a merchant marine blush.

This morning the Russians were there, but Christine was not.

Reese glanced through his camera into the café. He couldn’t spot her there, either.

“There’s no mortgage,” Finch said, half to himself. “The property was purchased outright in 2007 by a corporate entity called Cassandra Consulting. Cassandra now rents the business to Chaos for one dollar a year. They also rent the top floor apartment to Miss Fitzgerald and the second floor to an Igor Zubek for the same amount.”

“And what does Cassandra consult about?” Reese asked.

“Another good question. The company doesn’t have any internet presence at all. No website, no social media. One phone listing, just a number.”

“Whatever they do, they don’t need to advertise,” Reese said. He let his gaze travel up the front of the building. The building itself was absolutely ordinary. Brick construction, fifty to a hundred years old, narrow street frontage but deep, of the ‘just build the damn thing’ style of architecture. The whole building had new windows, neat and weather-efficient. But the windows on the top floor had intrigued him on his first visit. Unlike the others, they had a faint iridescent sheen. There was some kind of sun coat on them – designed to keep the sun’s rays from fading the furniture, to keep the apartment warmer in winter and cooler in summer. To keep the neighbors from peeking in. And, if she’d paid for the upgrade, they kept anyone from listening in with a surveillance device. For all he knew they were bullet-proof, too.

Which made him wonder why an apparently ordinary young woman had safe-house quality ballistic windows, and what other security measures she’d taken. It was a level of paranoia he’d come to expect from Finch.

According to Finch’s very brief recounting of their earlier history, at fourteen Christine had been a high school summer intern at IFT. Three years later she’d been a heroin addict who’d hacked IFT’s systems. Finch had found her and put her in a rehabilitation facility against her will. She’d broken out. And that was the last he’d heard of her until the Frollich case.

Finch was convinced that the girl was going to be a victim, and that he was personally responsible for whatever danger she was in. Reese wasn’t convinced of either of those things. She had a history of high-level hacking and serious drug abuse. Though she now owned a cybercafé, there was no proof that she hadn’t continued to pursue either or both of her criminal interests.

Clearly she was using the business to hide something.

“According to the tax returns, Christine Fitzgerald is Cassandra’s sole employee.” Finch sighed heavily. “This may take some time to unravel. I should have sorted it out right away.”

“I’m surprised that you didn’t, Finch.”

“She asked me not to.”

Reese frowned. “She knew you were looking into her finances?”

“I told you, Mr. Reese, she’s extremely bright. That’s why I asked you not to approach her.”

  1. Which meant, Reese knew, that Finch knew perfectly well he’d spent some time watching her. But John hadn’t gone into the café itself – yet. “She wouldn’t know me if she ran into me on the street,” he    promised. “We may be down to sex, drugs, or espionage, Finch. Are you sure she’s not with the government?”



“There’s no connection that I can find,” Finch answered.  ”And honestly, I don’t know where’s she’d find the time. It’s as if she has a whole secret existence. Chaos is everywhere, and Cassandra’s completely hidden.”

Reese smirked. “Kinda like everyone knew she was an insurance executive and no one knew she was a mad genius with a computer.”

Finch sighed. “Exactly like that. And she is very good at covering her tracks.”

“That does not surprise me.” Reese looked across the street again. “This girl is serious about security.”

“I don’t understand. There is nothing in her background that suggests a need for excessive caution.”

Except that she knew you when she was young, Reese thought, and you basically had her committed against her will. That might have made me paranoid into adulthood. He decided not the mention it.

Reese raised his camera and scanned the front windows again. Fitzgerald wasn’t anywhere that he could see her. He stood up, walked across the street and down the side street past the building. There was a fire escape to the two upstairs apartments. From the ground, it looked like the third floor window over the fire escape might be open an inch or two. Reese couldn’t get a good angle to see for sure. At the back of the building was a wide wooden staircase to the back doors. He stopped in the shadow of an alley with a view of the stairs.

Drugs, Reese thought again. Or hacking. Or both. Either of those could put her in danger. And that was before he factored Finch’s visit in. This was not going to be an easy case, any way he looked at it.

He brought out his phone and called Carter.

“Good morning,” the detective said after the first ring.

“Good morning, Detective. I need a favor.”

“That’s the only reason you ever call me.”

“I’m sorry. Some time I’ll just call to chat.”

“Sure you will. What’s up?”

“I need to know if you have anything on a woman named Christine Fitzgerald.”

“Got a middle initial?”

“Try B,” Finch offered. “Or S.”

“Good morning,” Carter greeted him sardonically. “BS first thing in the morning. That’s about right from you two.” There was a brief pause. “Born in 83?”

“That’s her.”

“It’s B, then. Miss Fitzgerald has a lead foot and no respect for parking restrictions. Other than that she’s clean.”

Reese nodded to himself. He scanned the back of the café through his camera lens. Nothing stood out.

“Except …” Carter went on, “…she doesn’t pay her tickets.”

“They’re delinquent?” Finch asked.

“They’re being waived.”

“Someone’s fixing her tickets?” Reese mused. He’d seen the local patrol officers stop into the café, probably for free coffee and pastries. But that wasn’t the kind of grift that made multiple tickets vanish. “Who?”

“Checking,” Carter muttered. “Looks like CCU.”

“Computer Crimes Unit,” Finch said. “That’s … interesting.”

“Can you find out why?” Reese asked.

“There’s nothing in the system,” Carter said. “But I have a friend over there. I’ll take her a bagel, see what she knows.”

“Send me the bill,” Finch said.

“Yeah, okay. And what would that address be?” Carter teased. “Hey. Something else. It might be nothing, but your girl got mugged this week.”

“What?”

“Monday,” Carter said. “Outside a library. The report says a guy in a ball cap and sunglasses held her up at gunpoint. He took a little over forty dollars in cash and a necklace that was worth less than a hundred.”

“Was she hurt?” Finch asked.

“Doesn’t look like he even touched her. Just a nice professional armed robbery. She wasn’t going to report it; the librarian called it in. I’m sending you the report number.”

“What about a juvie record?” Reese asked.

“I’m not seeing one.”

“Thanks, Carter.” Reese shut down that call. “Finch?”

“I’m looking at the report,” Finch answered. “Exactly as Detective Carter described it. Nothing to indicate that it’s anything significant.”

“Like your visit to Chaos,” Reese answered. “Could be something, could be nothing.”

“There are no coincidences, Mr. Reese. Both of those things almost certainly play into whatever danger she’s in now.” 

Reese nodded to himself. “Finch, I don’t think the girl is home.” He dialed the number that was painted over the back door of the café.

“Chaos,” a female chirped briskly.

“Hey, is Christine there?”

“Who?”

“Scottie,” Finch prompted.

“Scottie,” Reese corrected. “Is Scottie around?”

“She’s at a meeting. Wanna leave a message?”

“I’ll call back.” John clicked off the phone. “Finch? Any idea where she went?”

“She’s got a cell phone,” Finch answered, “but I can’t find any way to track it. I think she’s got it turned off.”

“No one leaves home without their cell phone turned off,” Reese said.

“Unless they don’t want to be tracked.”

“Mmmm.” Reese looked at those windows again. Sex, drugs, or espionage, he thought again. Very discrete escort? Wrong neighborhood for high-end clients, and if she wasn’t bringing them home, why the privacy glass? Drug dealer or drug maker? More possible; definitely the right neighborhood for that.  Spy? Also possible. If she wasn’t government, maybe some variety of private-sector espionage.

Cassandra Consulting. Your doom foretold. Maybe she was a fortuneteller.

“Got her,” Finch finally said. “She left the apartment almost an hour ago. There was a cab waiting for her.”

“Where was she going?”

“Still working on that. It is not a particularly good camera angle.”

“I have faith in you, Finch.”

“Thank you.”

 “I’m going to have a look around her apartment.”

“Be careful, Mr. Reese. It would be better if Miss Fitzgerald didn’t know we were prying into her personal affairs again.”

“I’ll use my usual discretion.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

Reese glanced around; there was no one paying attention. He climbed the steps quickly, planning to pick the lock quickly and be out of sight.

The door to Christine Fitzgerald’s apartment was heavy-duty steel, painted a cheery sky blue. It had a standard lock, but also a separate electronic bolt with a keypad. It was top of the line. He leaned down to look at the bottom of it. The reader was biometric. Finch’s scanner wouldn’t work; this lock wanted a code or a thumbprint. He could get through it if he needed to, but not quietly or neatly. For the moment he didn’t touch it. “So much for a quick look around,” he muttered.

“Problem, Mr. Reese?”

“If it makes you feel any better, she’s being elusive at this end, too.”

He started back down the steps, thinking about trying the fire escape. Before he got to the second floor landing, the door opened and a very large man stepped out. He was six inches taller than Reese, a hundred pounds heavier, maybe fifteen years older. He had a big flat middle-European face and a significant mustache. Reese recognized him as one of the night baristas. “Help you?”

“I was looking for Christine. Scottie.”

“Think she went out a while ago.” The man looked him up and down, obviously taking mental notes.

“I was supposed to meet her for breakfast. But I, uh, I forgot where. And she’s got her phone turned off.”

“She does that,” the man allowed. “Doesn’t like the government following her around.”

“The government follows her around?”

The man frowned at him. Reese knew it was the wrong thing to say; he’d given away that he didn’t actually know the woman. “You want to leave a note or something?”

“Ummm …”

His phone rang. Reese glanced at it, clicked it on. “Hey, Scottie.”

“I have located her,” Finch said.

“Oh, good. I’m just running a little late myself, I’ll be right there.” He gestured to the man. “Found her, thanks,” he said. He eased past him and continued down the steps. “Where?” he asked Finch.

“She has a breakfast meeting with a man named Jared Rickel. I’m sending you the address.”

“Who’s Jared Rickel?”

“He’s the senior partner at Cantum, Rickel & Piros Financial. CRP wired twenty-five thousand dollars to Cassandra Consulting late yesterday. For services rendered, whatever that may mean.”

Might still be an escort or a drug dealer, Reese mused. He glanced at the address on his phone. “I’m going back to Wall Street. Do I need my good suit?”

“Not for a breakfast meeting, I wouldn’t think. If it goes longer than that I’ll bring it to you.”

Reese growled under his breath and headed for his car.

As he pulled out of the parking spot, a battered green Chevy pulled into it.

 ***

** July 1998 **

Nathan Ingram wasn’t in his office, but his laptop was still on and his jacket hung over the back of his chair. Harold flopped into the side chair and pulled the laptop over to him.

“Please don’t change my password again,” Nathan said when he returned.

Harold grunted. “You shouldn’t leave it on, you know.”

“I’m not shutting down my laptop every time I go to the men’s room. What are you looking for?”

Harold glanced up from the screen. “One of your Red Shirts just about got herself leveled in the cafeteria.”

Ingram scowled. He was very proud of his fledging high school internship program. He’d recruited the top twenty students in the city, chosen from over 700 essay submissions. The program had a long, fancy name that Harold hadn’t bothered to learn. But since Nathan had elected to dress all his eager mini-interns in dark red monogrammed polo shirts, and since everyone but him considered them completely expendable, they had very quickly come to be called Red Shirts. “Which one?”

He held his hand straight out, level to the floor. “The little one.”

“Chrissy,” Ingram said immediately. “Brown hair, glasses?”

“That’s her.” Harold leaned forward to watch the screen more closely. He’d accessed the right surveillance camera; now he searched for the right time. “I thought they were supposed to be juniors and seniors. That girl can’t be more than ten.”

“She’s fourteen,” Ingram corrected. “And she’ll be a junior in the fall. St. Mary’s.”

“Hmm.” Harold found the right time frame. He wound back just a little, then watched the replay from the overhead angle. He’d been waiting in line. The girl had been leaving the cafeteria and she hadn’t been paying attention; she was rubbing her forehead as she walked toward the door. She carried a slender paperback in her other hand. But Gwen from HR wasn’t looking either; she was chatting, as always, talking over her shoulder, and she’d run squarely into the child.

Fortunately neither of them had a tray in their hands. The book went flying, and Harold made a one-in-his-lifetime athletic catch to grab it out of midair. But the intern hadn’t appreciated the catch, because Gwen had thrown her arm up, trying to keep her balance, and the girl had cowered back, covered her head with her own arms.

And then just as quickly she straightened up, took her book – _The Gulag Archipelago_ – back from Harold, muttered an embarrassed apology, and hurried out.

It had been so brief that Harold hadn’t been sure he’d seen it. But it was definitely there on the tape. “Does St. Mary’s know she’s being abused?” he asked quietly.

Nathan looked at him steadily. “That’s part of why she’s here.”

“You can’t save everyone, Nathan,” Harold said mildly. He was accustomed to Ingram’s grand world-redeeming initiatives, and he knew there was no point in arguing over them. But he was also adept at avoiding becoming enmeshed in them.

“Maybe not. But I can save this girl.” He opened a drawer, pulled out a file folder.  “She’s smart, Harold. Really smart. Read her essay. _Avatars and Aliases_. She has some very original ideas about the future of identities on the internet.”

Harold made no move toward the file.  “If you say so.”

His friend’s enthusiasm was undimmed. “I’m telling you, of all of them, that’s the kid to watch. She’s going to be a rock star. And she’ll be _our_ rock star. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks, Harold, ten years from now you thank me for getting her on board when I did.”

Harold glanced at the folder. Nathan had been an unrepentant optimist for a long as he’d known him; that didn’t make him a fool. The folder was worth a look. But not while Ingram was watching; no point in encouraging his crusading ways. “Keep your money, Nathan.” He gestured with his head towards the screen. “Get her some glasses that don’t give her a headache.”

“Aww, see, Harold, you do care.” Ingram chuckled. “Fine. I’ll take care of it. But I’m telling you, that one girl could make this whole program worthwhile.”

Harold rolled his eyes and went on to other things.

***

 


	4. Chapter 4

2012

Reese paused in the doorway of the restaurant. It was a nice little bistro with a full bar. This close to Wall Street proper, it probably did a fantastic lunch business. The breakfast crowd had it half-filled.Well-groomed men and woman in conservative suits of black and charcoal and the occasional daring navy, talking too loudly, laughing too much, flashing too many expensive watches and phones. The best and the brightest, he thought, and felt vaguely underdressed. Before he got to a seat, some sort of silent signal ran through the crowd and they began to leave. Nearly time for the opening bell, John realized. In the space of three minutes, fully two-thirds of the crowd was gone.

A few tables remained occupied. There was a couple with a small child and two sleepy-looking teens. An older couple lingering over coffee. A younger couple just ordering. A group of four men in suits, arguing over data sheets. In the far back corner was a big table surrounded by six older men, casually dressed, sporting veterans’ patches on vests and baseball caps. There were six women with them, around the same age, probably their wives. Reese had seen a lot of groups like them around the city, making the pilgrimage to Ground Zero.

At a table in the center of the room, two men finished their breakfast. One was a tall white-haired man who’d taken his jacket off and was finishing up with a large platter. The other was a much smaller, much darker man who picked at a bagel.

Reese picked up an abandoned newspaper, sat down at the bar, and gestured for coffee. There was a highly polished display case behind the bar that gave him an excellent view of the table. He took his phone out, snapped a picture over his shoulder, and sent it to Finch. “Is that Rickel?”

“Yes,” Finch answered at once. “The gentleman with him is Anthony Piros, his partner. This could be a more important meeting than we anticipated.”

“Where’s the third partner?” Reese wondered.

“He’s been dead for years.” More clicking. “Miss Fitzgerald still has her phone off, but I’m sending you Rickel’s number.”

“Good.” The waitress brought him coffee; he ordered a short stack of pancakes as well. When she left, he cloned Rickel’s phone.

“I thought you never ate in the field,” Finch reminded him.

“Need something to do with my hands,” Reese explained. He flipped through the paper. “And also, I’m hungry. You called me before breakfast.”

The men at the table behind him did not talk, until Rickel suddenly pushed his plate away. “There she is,” he said.

Reese glanced over his shoulder. Christine Fitzgerald was in the doorway. She wore a simple white blouse and ankle-length yellow skirt. It was perfectly presentable outfit, modest, fine for office work. But in contrast to the starkly tailored Wall Street drones that had just left, she stood out like a dandelion on a putting green.

Christine’s hair was pulled back in a wide braid. She wore flat white sandals. Carried a shoulder bag with a sunflower print. It all made her look like she was younger and trying to look older. She seemed naïve, innocent.

No one, Reese reminded himself firmly, was ever what they appeared to be.

She walked confidently across the restaurant. Rickel and Piros both stood up. She shook Rickel’s hand first; he introduced her to Piros. Then she moved around the table and sat down facing Reese.

Maybe that was nothing. And maybe she didn’t like her back to the door. Sex, drugs or espionage. They all required caution.

“I see you took our money,” Rickel said genially.

“I told you I would,” Christine answered.

Piros growled. “You don’t look like a hacker.” He was not nearly as happy to see her as his partner was.

“What does a hacker look like?” she asked sweetly.

“Aaah,” Reese said quietly. “Tigers and stripes, Finch.”

“Of course,” Finch answered. “I’m on it.”

“Breakfast?” Rickel asked.

“Just coffee, thanks.” He gestured. She reached into her bag, brought out three comb-bound documents and a flash drive. She put them all on the corner of the table.

Reese’s pancakes arrived and he began to eat slowly, still holding the newspaper in his other hand.

“That’s what we get,” Piros asked dourly, “for a hundred thousand dollars?”

“It’s worth every dime,” Rickel countered. “Can you imagine the fall-out if those Anonymous bastards got in? Our exposure could be tens of millions.”

“They wired her twenty-five thousand,” Finch muttered. “Where’s the other seventy-five?”

Reese didn’t bother to answer; the genius was clearly talking to himself.

Piros wasn’t impressed. “So, this report of yours tells us who to fire?”

“It tells you how I hacked your system,” Fitzgerald answered. “Whether you fire anyone is up to you. But honestly, I’d advise against it. Your IT director has a solid security program, and his team is responsive and effective against active threats.”

“But you still hacked us.”

“Yes.”

“So he’s out, and we need to hire someone who can guarantee we can never be hacked.”

“There’s no such person.”

“What do you mean?” Rickel demanded.

“Anyone who guarantees that you will never be hacked is lying. There’s no such thing as a system that can’t be hacked,” the woman told them. “There are more secure systems and less secure systems, but there is no such thing as a completely secure system.”

It’s all a ruse, Reese realized. The bright skirt, the girlish hair, the shoes. The smile. The unabashed perkiness of the whole package. They were rich and powerful men, and she was so pretty and childlike that she was completely unthreatening to them. With no power dynamic in play, they were willing to listen to her. They wouldn’t have given their own IT director – a middle-aged man in a conservative suit, no doubt – five minutes of full attention, but they would sit and listen to this young woman for as long as she talked.

And apparently, pay her generously for the inconvenience.

It did not escape his notice that parts of Finch’s persona would be just as susceptible to this approach.He was already inclined to believe anything she said. It would bear extra caution on Reese’s part.

“Not one secure system, in the whole world?” Piros demanded.

“No.”

“Not even the government?”

“ _Especially_ not the government. Hacking them used to be a party game, until it got too boring.” She gestured vaguely. “There may be a system that I personally can’t hack, but there is no system that _someone_ can’t hack.”

“All the advances we’ve made with computers, there ought to be some way to secure them.”

“It’s not the computers that are the problem. Computers can be perfect,” Christine told them. “The problem is that operators are human, and humans make exploitable mistakes.”

“Then why do we even bother having an IT department?” Piros demanded. “It sounds like we might as well just give up.”

The young woman sipped her coffee. “Think of network security like putting a high-grade lock on the front door of your house. As long as you limit the number of keys, the lock stays secure. But you can’t do business that way. For _your_ company to work, your people have to be able to get inside the house. You have a hundred and forty employees, and every one of them has access. So you gave away three hundred and forty keys to that front door. Some of those people will lose their keys, and some will misuse them. This little wager I made with Mr. Rickel? It’s a sucker’s bet. The more keys you give away, the greater the chances that you can be hacked.

“But,” she continued, “that doesn’t mean you should just leave the door open. A good lock – a good IT department – moves you toward the ‘more secure’ end of the spectrum. And yours is very good. That means that only fairly sophisticated hacker can get through your defenses. It keeps you safe from the casual drive-bye.

“The DFHs,” Rickel contributed.

“What’s that?” Piros asked.

“Dirty f’ing hippies.” He looked to the girl “Excuse my French. So what do we do?”

She tapped the report. “You read this, and you give it to your IT department. You increase their budget. If you hire even one more person, you think long and hard about adding a CIO; you’re more than big enough to need one. You develop a revised employee education program, and you back it up with HR enforcement. There’s a list of resources in the back, but it’s not exhaustive.”

“A hundred thousand dollars,” Piros said, “for a list I could have Googled for myself.”

“You can also show it to your Board. They like independent audits. So do liability insurers, especially if you follow up on the recommendations.”

“All right,” Rickel sighed. “Tell us how you did this.”

“Got her,” Finch announced with satisfaction. “A week ago today, Mr. Rickel moved seventy-five thousand dollars into an off-shore account in the Cayman Islands. Yesterday morning those funds were transferred into Miss Fitzgerald’s own Cayman account.”

“It never came on shore, so she doesn’t pay any taxes.”

“I think tax evasion is a side issue at this point, Mr. Reese. I’m in CRP’s system now.”

“That didn’t take long.”

“She left a back door.”

At the table, the conversation had continued. The young woman was holding a private seminar on network security, and the two senior partners were listening to ever word. “Four things every sysadmin knows,” Fitzgerald said. “PBSL. Porn, backup, surfing and lies. Everybody has porn, nobody has adequate backup, everybody surfs the web at work, and everybody lies about the first three.”

“And the surfing, that’s our problem?” Rickel asked.

“That’s always the highest vulnerability, yes.”

“So we should have some kind of block. No personal internet.”

“It won’t work. They’ll find a way around it.”

“Then a zero-tolerance policy,” Piros suggested. “Anybody caught surfing will be terminated.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Finch murmured.

Christine said, “You can do that, but it would be like ringing the dinner bell.” She touched the pile of reports again. “It’s true that I used personal e-mails – among other things – to access your systems. But as soon as your employees realized that there was a problem, they notified IT. And in each case they had the virus cleared within forty-five minutes. If you have a zero-tolerance policy, the original employees would still have been surfing, but they wouldn’t have called for help. I can do a lot of damage in an hour. But if I have a whole day, I can steal everything and burn your network to the ground.”

“Exactly,” Finch agreed. “Mr. Reese, I’ve followed Miss Fitzgerald through their systems. As we knew, she is quite a gifted hacker. She found multiple weaknesses in their system.”

“Could she be _our_ hacker?” It would be too easy, Reese thought, for the Machine to simply deliver the woman who had breached Finch’s security to them.

“Root? I considered it, but it’s unlikely. She was in Italy when Michael Delancy was killed.”

“You _could_ run an operation that complex from overseas,” Reese mused. “But you’re probably right.”

They listened to the young woman’s talk for a while more. Reese could hear Finch tapping in the background. “Mr. Reese, Christine Fitzgerald has multiple off-shore accounts with a combined balance of just over five million dollars. All of the deposits are in increments of seventy-five thousand dollars.”

“So we know what Cassandra Consulting consults about.”

“Yes. But how in the world does a woman with no visible credentials negotiate this sort of arrangement?” Finch sighed. “In the income that she does declare, there are two distinct income streams. One is composed of twenty-five thousand dollar deposits, and there are twelve of those in the past eleven months. The other deposits are much smaller and more sporadic, but more numerous. They’re coming from hardware and software companies worldwide. I wonder… ”

At the table, RIckel said, “All right, young lady. Let’s cut to the chase. What’s it going to take to get you on board?”

Reese watched the young woman in the reflection. She smiled, unsurprised by the question. “Thank you, Mr. Rickel, but I’m not looking for a job.”

“Oh, of course you are. And you just aced the interview.” He pulled a little pad out of his pocket, wrote on it swiftly, tore off the top page and put it face-down on the table. “Try that number on for size.”

She didn’t even reach for it. “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested.”

“Take a look before you decide. It’s a very generous offer.”

“Mr. Rickel, you do not have enough money to persuade me to work nine to five.”

He took the paper back, scratched out the number and wrote a new one. Slid it across the table, face-down. “How about now?”

She smiled sweetly and shook her head. “I am not looking for a job, Mr. Rickel. I am not built for the corporate world. I hate cubicles, I hate wearing shoes, and honestly, I don’t like most people on a long-term basis. And they don’t really like me.”

The man chortled. “You can work any hours you want. Come in at midnight, leave at dawn. I’ll get you a corner office. Shoes don’t matter; you can work naked for all I care, as long as you keep your door shut. And you don’t have to like anybody. You get steady money, job security, paid vacations, health insurance – company car if you want. Hell, you can have _my_ car.”

“I should have held out for a deal like that,” Reese grumbled.

“I’m sorry, John. It never occurred to me that you’d want to work naked,” Finch answered. “But we can certainly re-negotiate.”

“You can secure our company,” Piros said. ”We’ll name you CIO if you want.” This announcement seemed to startle his partner, but he didn’t back down. He snagged the little paper, wrote his own number on it, and held it out to the woman. “Here. Take this.”

Fitzgerald shook her head again. “It would end in tears. I wouldn’t last three days before I’d be storming into your board room and knocking heads together.” She tapped the reports again. “Two of your board members use ‘Password1’ as their log-ins, and another one uses ‘1-2-3-4-5’. I can’t work with people like that. I don’t have the patience.”

Piros put the paper down in disgust.

“Besides,” the woman went on, “I have enough money.”

Rickel snorted. “ _Enough_ money? What the hell is that?”

“Enough that I can do whatever I want.”

“But you could have a lot more.”

“I don’t need more.”

The men shared a look. For the first time John sensed that they were absolutely flummoxed. “You’re a funny little thing, aren’t you?” Rickel finally said.

“Yes, sir, I am.”

He sighed. “And there’s no number I can name that will change your mind?”

“No. Sorry.”

He shook his head, gestured for the check.

“But there is one more number I’d like,” Christine reminded him gently.

Rickel grunted, reached for his jacket. He brought a business card out of his pocket and gave it to her. “Tim Taddeo,” he said. “Coastal Finance. I called him yesterday. He’s out of the country, but he’ll be back a week from Monday. He’s expecting your call.”

“Thank you,” Christine said. She tucked the card into her bag. All of them stood up.

“That’s how she does it,” Finch said. “Personal reference, peer to peer. One CEO to the next. Very clever.”

“If Ted makes you a job offer …” Piros said.

“I won’t go to work for him, either,” Christine answered.

“You’ll give us a chance to counter-offer,” Rickel pressed.

“I promise.”

“Give you a ride somewhere?”

The woman glanced around the restaurant. “Thanks, but I have a few things to do here.” They shook hands; Rickel paid the check, and the partners took their reports and left.

Christine moved to the end of the counter, three stools over from Reese, and sat down again. “Coffee to go?” the waitress asked.

“No, thanks.” She leaned forward and murmured something to her. Reese couldn’t catch all of the words, but the waitress looked past him toward the back of the restaurant and grinned. There was a little more discussion; Christine brought out a credit card—platinum Amex – and handed it to her. The waitress kept smiling, a full partner in their little conspiracy, and took it away.

Reese turned his head. The women had been looking at the big table where the old veterans and their wives were finishing their breakfasts. He glanced back at Christine. She was studying him. She gave him a small embarrassed smile and looked away.

While she waited, the woman brought out a small tablet and powered it up. She keyed a few buttons; Reese could see some kind of video on the screen. He turned his face away from her. “Finch?” he murmured. “She’s on a tablet, probably on the restaurant’s WiFi.”

“Hang on.”

Reese finished his pancakes, pushed his plate away. He pulled out two bills and tucked them under the edge of the plate. Sipped his coffee, glanced at his watch.

“I’m on the WiFi,” Finch announced, “but she’s got the tablet password protected.”

“You sound annoyed.” Reese shifted so that he could see the woman in the reflection again.

“I am beginning to be, yes.”

The woman’s posture shifted abruptly. She put her free arm across her chest protectively; her shoulders hunched, her expression darkened. Whatever she was watching on her tablet frightened her.

“I’m in,” Finch said. “Backwards, but I’m in.”

“I don’t even want to know what that means.”

“I’m not logged into the tablet. I’m in through the WiFi …”

“Don’t care, Finch. What’s she looking at?” She had begun to rock back and forth subtly. For a young woman who had just charmed two Wall Street titans so confidently, she seemed very uncertain now.

The waitress returned with a check and the woman’s credit card. She held them out, but Christine didn’t notice until she said, “Miss?” Then the girl jumped. “Sorry,” the waitress murmured. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No problem.” Christine took the check, added a tip, signed it quickly, gave it back. She glanced at the back booth once more, smiled tightly to herself. Then she tucked her credit card away and left the restaurant, still staring at her tablet. Reese moved after her, but stayed inside the door. As he’d expected, she sat down on the bench just outside; she didn’t want to go far enough to disconnect from the WiFi.

“It looks like a surveillance camera view of a room,”

“A room where?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a living room. It’s … Mr. Reese, it’s her apartment.And there’s someone there.”

“You said she lived alone.”

“He doesn’t live there, I’m sure of that.”

“Show me.”

His phone chirped. Reese keyed it and watched on the small display what both Finch and their target were watching. The man – medium build, black sweatshirt with the hood up, dark pants, sunglasses – was searching the apartment. He moved quietly, carefully, opening drawers, taking small items, putting them into the duffle he carried over this shoulder. There was a little desk with a laptop on it; he unplugged the computer and tucked it into the bag. The he reached under the desk and brought out a portable hard drive. He seemed very pleased about this; he grinned as he put it in the bag. Then he kept searching.

One of the windows was open. From the lay-out, Reese guessed it was the one over the fire escape.

The intruder moved into one of the back rooms, out of camera range. Reese glanced up at Fitzgerald. She touched her tablet and the picture shifted; now they were looking past a small breakfast bar, across the living room and down a little hall. The man came out of one room, crossed to the other. Bedrooms, Reese guessed.

“She’s watching this man rob her apartment,” Finch said.

“She’s _letting_ this man rob her apartment,” Reese answered softly. He looked up again. The young woman was still huddled, making herself as small as possible, a little ball of anxiety. Her fingertips drummed incessantly on the edge of the tablet. But she didn’t act, didn’t make any move. She watched intently.

The view switched again. The man was back in the center of the living room. He looked around once more, then climbed out the open window. He pulled it most of the way shut behind him.

Christine Fitzgerald tapped her table.

“Mr. Reese,” Finch said, “a silent alarm’s just been sent from the apartment.”

“Police or private?” A call to the police would take a while to elicit a response.

“Private.”

The woman turned her phone on. Within ten seconds it rang and she answered it.

“And that would be them calling her,” Finch said.

Reese keyed his phone to clone hers.

A blast of sound exploded from his earpiece.

Reese stepped back away from the doorway and snagged the piece out of his ear at the same time. He put his thumb on the power button of his phone and held it down. The shrill alarm stopped. Reese shook his head to clear it, rubbed his ear. It hurt, a lot. He peeked around the doorway. Christine Fitzgerald was on her feet, moving; she hailed a cab and got in very quickly.

Reese’s impulse was to grab a cab or steal a car and follow her, but it was impractical here at this time of day; traffic was too tight and too slow. He started out on foot. He could move as fast as the cab, at least for a while. But he had to keep a little distance and stick to the crowd. She’d had a good look at him.

As he walked, he cautiously, he turned on his phone. It remained blessedly silent. The screen came up with a new message: CLONE FAIL. It chirped and he answered the handset against his left ear, unwilling to replace the earwig. It felt like a smoke detector had gone off against his right eardrum. “Finch?”

“She has her phone alarmed.”

“No kidding.”

“Are you all right?”

“A little deaf.” Reese rubbed his ear again, looked at his hand. He was surprised there was no blood on it. “She’s moving. And she’s spooked.”

“Of course she is. Can you stay with her?”

“Finch.”

“Of course. Sorry.”

“What about the apartment?”

“The security firm’s dispatched a car; they should be there in less than five minutes.”

Reese nodded. “That’s where she’ll be going, then.” The cab was headed the right direction. In ten more blocks the traffic would thin out, but they knew where she was headed. “Finch, who has an alarm like that?”

“I do,” Finch answered simply, “and you do. Ours are silent; they prevent cloning and alert us to the surveillance attempt. Some government agencies may have access. Some very high-end tech companies. The technology is cutting edge. It’s not cheap, and it’s not easy to obtain.”

“Can you track it down?”

“Mr. Reese.”

“Of course. Sorry.” Reese smiled grimly. The girl’s cab stopped at a light; he dropped into a doorway and waited until they were rolling again. “Finch, if she has active surveillance inside her apartment, she’s likely to have it on her back door as well.”

“I don’t know that there’s anything I can do about it. I haven’t been able to access her network.”

“Try.”

“Trying,” Finch said. “I have learned something about that second income stream. Cassandra Consulting receives an average of six packages per week. From the same tech companies that are paying her the smaller amounts. I believe she’s working as a beta tester.”

“What does that mean to us, Finch?”

“It probably means that she has access to the very newest technology.”

“Like the phone alarm.”

“Yes. I should have realized that her Austin trips are significant; she probably went to the South by Southwest conference. You’ll need to be very careful until we find out what else she has up her sleeve.”

“Wonderful.” John brushed his ear again. It was still ringing. “This one is way too clever, Finch. High security, staged robberies, phone alarms. She’s going to be trouble.”

“Yes,” Finch agreed grimly. “I did warn you.”

They were both silent for a moment. Reese knew that Harold was probably thinking the same thing he was. If they showed her even a corner of their operation, she might be bright enough to unravel the rest for herself. And if this Number exposed them, they wouldn’t be able to help any of the ones that came after her. That was always the risk they took. The judge, Carter – there had been others. But this one felt more hazardous than most.

And yet she secretly paid for old soldiers’ breakfasts in a restaurant.

He followed her cab. He wasn’t going to stop. And Finch certainly wasn’t going to ask him to. It was what they did.

As if he’d been following his thoughts, Finch said, quietly, “She donated ten thousand dollars to a crisis nursery last month.”

“A what?”

“A shelter for abused women with small children. She also has a soft spot for veteran’s organizations and … libraries.”

“Let’s hope she doesn’t donate enough to get yours reopened, Finch.”

“She doesn’t _have_ enough to get mine reopened, Mr. Reese.”

“She could if she put her mind to it.”

Finch chuckled dryly. “ _Enough_ money. What a very subversive notion.”

“It’ll never catch on.”

“I’m sure it won’t.” Finch paused. “Mr. Reese, they’ve just placed a call to the nearest police precinct.”

“What is she doing?” Reese mused. “If she wanted this guy caught, she could have called them earlier. Hang on, Finch.” Reese pulled out his phone and dialed another number.

After three rings, Fusco said, “What?”

“Good morning, Detective.”

“Kinda busy. What do you want?”

“I’m sending you an address. There was just a break-in here.”

“What did you steal this time?”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Reese answered serenely.

“That’s a switch.”

“They just called it in. When it’s in the system, I need you to send me the report number.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“I’ll call you.” The phone went dead.

“What do we do now, Mr. Reese?” Finch asked.

“You find out more about our girl,” Reese answered. “I’ll catch up.”

“You think it’s wise to leave her alone?”

“She’s not alone,” Reese pointed out. “The rent-a-cops will stay with her until the police get there, and I’ll be there before they leave. And she’s got her counter guy.” He hung up the phone and rubbed his ear one more time.

***


	5. Chapter 5

Joe Moodey whistled to himself as he walked back to his car. He’d been in the neighborhood for a week; he’d be glad to be out of it. But the job had been easy enough, once the damn girl finally let her guard down. Smoking kills, he thought grimly, and smoking on your fire escape leads to unlocked windows and then to someone stealing your stuff.

He opened the trunk and set his bag carefully inside. That chunky old laptop and the weird box were his ticket to bigger and better things. Been tough, since his boss got blown up. But once he got this stuff to Mr. Piggy, he’d be back in the cash. Back to plenty of jobs with much better pay-outs.

Except, he reminded himself, he needed to never ever call him Mr. Piggy to his face.

Moodey grinned. He couldn’t help it that the man’s eyes were so weird-looking. They were very round and set right next to his nose. He looked like a pig. Probably someone had told him that before. Probably lots of people. Mr. Piggy. It was funny.

Mr. Piggy didn’t seem like the kind of guy who had much of a sense of humor about stuff like that.

So, keep his mouth shut and never made the snout noise, Moodey though. Take the big jobs and the Pig Man’s money and shut the hell up. Maybe he could ever afford a new place. Not that there was anything wrong with his old place, except that his old girlfriend was still living there and he was sick to death of her. She had a wicked temper, so breaking up with her wasn’t an option. Moving out and never going back, that was definitely the way to go with this one.

He closed the trunk and walked around to the driver’s side door. Then he pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through his contacts to the one with no name. Piggy answered on the first ring. “You got it?”

Moodey grinned. “Not much for small talk, are you? Yeah, I got it. Told you I would.”

“The box, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. The place we met before. In an hour.”

“You got it.” Moodey clicked his phone off. Not a talker, Mr. Piggy. Joe didn’t care. Put cash in his hand, and he didn’t care if the guy never said a word.

He started thinking about where his new apartment should be.

 ***

Cameras became Harold Finch’s priority.

He hacked into the exterior surveillance cameras around Chaos. He was already in the one at the front of the café. He found another that gave a partial view of the alley but not the fire escape, and one on the side street, again with a bad angle. He watched as the private security car arrived; the large barista came out to meet the officers, and all three of them went back inside.

The camera at the back door – if there was one – was his next problem. The last thing they needed was for the police to have a nice clear video image of John Reese trying to break into her apartment. But nothing Finch tried gave him access to Fitzgerald’s network. All of his routine approaches – an e-mail coupon, an e-vite to the party of the year – were certain to fail. Something from one of the companies she beta-tested for might work. He composed an e-mail and sent it, without much hope. In any case, she wasn’t currently checking her e-mail.

She was very careful with the Cassandra side of her life, and very good at firewalling it. It wasn’t surprising, really. She’d learned system security at Nathan Ingram’s knee, and then cut her hacking teeth on those same systems. If she’d stayed in the internship program, it was likely Nathan would have made her his protégé, his apprentice. And he’d been right about her. She had talent and intelligence. And she had the intangible thing that separated an elite hacker from a true genius: she had instinct.

All of which made her incredibly difficult to access. 

Finch shook his head. Christine Fitzgerald was so much more than he’d thought she was. She hadn’t settled for running a cybercafé, as he’d first believed. Chaos was no more than a hobby for her. She wasn’t Nathan’s billionaire rock star, either. But that had been her choice, not a product of her childhood. _Enough_ money, she’s said. Enough to travel, to learn, to support a little shop. Enough to make whatever choices she wanted to make. _Enough_ money. Rickel and Piros had had no idea what she was talking about. In times past, Finch wouldn’t have understood either. But he did now.

She’d done, he realized, exactly what he’d told her she could do all those years ago. She’d done anything she wanted.

The odd warmth again. Finch smiled to himself. And then he put it deliberately aside. They still had to keep her alive.

A cab arrived and Christine got out. While she was paying the driver, a police patrol car pulled up. Finch frowned; it was a very fast response time for a relatively minor B&E. But the greeting the officers gave her made it obvious that they all knew each other. Of course, Finch realized: Cops and coffee. The girl probably couldn’t even get a parking ticket in her neighborhood.

As they went inside, Finch stopped his attempts to hack Fitzgerald’s systems. She would be distracted while she was dealing with the police, but she was sure to be back on her computer the moment they left. She might still discover that he’d been poking around – and she might even be able to discover that it was _him_ – but by going inactive on that front, he at least would not draw her immediate attention.

Besides, he had a great many other places to look. 

From the bank statement on the Cassandra Consulting account, he had the names of the twelve companies that she’d audited – hacked – most recently. How many more were there? How many CIOs and IT directors had she infuriated along her way to having enough money? How many had been fired in the wake of her audit? Or had she uncovered something more than security failures, something more dangerous?

The account was eleven months old. Before that the funds had gone somewhere else. Finch sighed. He could find her older checking account, but it might take time.

Clever girl. What had been charmingly clever was quickly becoming maddeningly clever. He wondered briefly if he was this annoying to Mr. Reese.

Finch shook his head. He needed to see her computer files. He needed to know who she’d hacked and what she’d found. Most importantly, he needed to know what she was up to right now, what was on the laptop and the hard drive she’d laid out as bait.

Given her deep paranoia and known intelligence, it was not going to be easy. Mr. Reese had already learned that first hand.

He glanced up at the first screen. The private security car left; the police remained. For the moment, at least, Christine Fitzgerald was safe.

She was extraordinarily careful. But she worked with people who were not so cautious. He’d already followed her audit through Jared Rickel’s company and hadn’t found anything suggestive. He picked up the name of the previous company and set to work.

 ***

Carter made her way through the crowded bullpen carefully; she carried two cups of coffee in one hand, a white bakery bag in the other. “Hey, Sherri,” she said, “you got a minute?”

Detective LaBlanca looked up from her computer screens. “Tell me that’s a bagel.”

“Cinnamon-raisin.”

“I love you, Joss.” She stood up and took the bag. “And you must want something.”

“Yeah, I do,” Carter confessed.

The detective gestured with her head toward an empty interrogation room. They went in and sat down. “Okay, go.”

“Christine Fitzgerald.”

 Sherri shook her head. “Never heard of her.”

“You sure?” Carter asked in surprise. “You fixed a parking ticket for her last month.”

“Fitz … oh, Scottie. Yeah, I know Scottie.”

“She a CI?”

“Yeah. No. Well, sorta.” LaBlanca spread cream cheese on half of the bagel. “She helps us out, but we don’t pay her.”

“Why not?”

“Because she never asks us to.” Sherri took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “She owns this coffee shop. Little place with computers, called Chaos. It’s kind of a dump, gets rowdy some nights. But in the afternoon she lets the neighbor kids come in and do their homework on her computers, stuff like that. A couple times a year we do a cyber safety meeting there. You know, don’t give out your address to strangers, don’t meet up with some guy you met in line.” LaBlanca rolled her eyes. “Not that it does any good, but we try. And sometimes she trouble-shoots for us, new viruses, new scams, stuff like that. Kind of an unofficial consultant.”

Carter sipped her coffee. “And that gets her tickets fixed?”

“Well … no. Every once in a while she comes in and does a walk-through for us.” She sipped her own coffee. “Women that are being stalked by their boyfriends or whatever, the first thing we tell them is to get off social media.”

“And they never listen,” Carter answered. “Been there, done that.”

“If I get one that I think it will help, I have Scottie come in and meet with her. They sit down at a computer and Scottie has her open her Facebook or Foursquare or whatever, and pick one of her friends at random. And in ten or fifteen minutes, Scottie can tell the woman all kinds of stuff about her friend. Where she lives, where she works, where she shops. What she drives, where she parks … I tell you, Joss, it’s scary as hell, the things she can find out about someone.”

“Sounds like someone else I know,” Carter grumbled.

“Yeah? They looking for a job?”

“Doubt it. So your girl shows them all this stuff, and then what?”

Sherri shrugged. “In theory, they see how easy it is for their guy to stalk them and they cancel their Facebook accounts. In reality, half of them are back on within the month. But at least we showed them.”

“And half of them stay off.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not bad. Is that it?”

“Pretty much. Why? What’d she do?”

“She got mugged,” Carter answered honestly.

“And why’s Homicide is looking at that?”

“A friend asked me to check up on her. That’s all.”

“Nobody’s trying to kill her, then.” LaBlanca seemed actually relieved.

Carter raised one eyebrow. “You think somebody might be?”

“No. Well … no. I mean, not anything specific. But she, uh, she pisses off some people.”

“You mean besides stalker boyfriends?”

LaBlanca finished the first half of her bagel, licked a little cream cheese off her fingertip. “Just between us?” She glanced toward the door. “She feeds us predators every once in a while. Anonymously.”

“Child predators?”

“Yeah.” She got up and closed the door. “We run our own stings, you know. An operator pretends to be a young girl online, sees who wants to meet up with her. Scottie does sort of the same thing. But she does all the work for us. We get a computer file, with a time-stamped chat and the IP all traced.”

“She IDs the perps for you?”

“I told you she was good. Like I said, the tips are always anonymous, but she uses a little tag, we know they’re from her. And her information is always solid.”

“How do you get a tip like that to stand up in court?”

“Don’t need to,” LaBlanca answered. “Most of the time they’re repeat offenders, it’s a straight-up parole violation. Other times we do a follow-up and get the same results. Once in a while she sets up a meet and we just go pick him up.”

Carter shook her head. “But she never picks up a reward?”

“Honestly? I think she just hunts them for fun.”

“If she’s anonymous, how would anyone know to come after her?”

“They wouldn’t,” Sherri answered. “Unless she decided to meet someone on her own. And she’s too smart for that.”

“Or unless there’s a leak in the department.”

“Maybe. But even dirty cops won’t stick up for pedophiles.” LaBlanca shook her head. “There is one other thing. If she catches one of these guys and finds out he has a kid at home, or a step-kid or whatever, she’ll broadcast the chat.”

“Broadcast?”

“She sends it to us, same as always, but she also sends it to his wife or girlfriend, his boss, his parents, his Facebook page. Anybody he’s connected with. Last time she did it, by the time we picked the guy up he was unemployed and homeless and his brother had beat the shit out of him.”

“She’s got a little vigilante streak in her,” Carter said evenly. 

LaBlanca shrugged. “If you found out one of these guys was living under the same roof with a child, would you wait?”

Carter shook her head, stood up. “Can you get me a list of the guys she’s burned?”

“You want the stalker boyfriends, too?”

“Yeah.” Her friend looked worried. “It’s probably nothing, but things are a little slow. Maybe I’ll take a look.”

“You need help, give me a yell.”

“I will. Thanks, Sherri.”

On her way back to her own desk, she dialed John’s number.

“What have you got for me, Carter?” he asked.

Carter chuckled. “I can tell you exactly why you like this girl,” she answered. “Looks like she’s been tearin’ pages out of your friend’s book.”

“They’d both consider that sacrilege, I think,” Reese answered. “But tell me more.”

 ***

The roof of the parking garage was mostly full. Moodey parked his car in one of the last empty spots and turned it off. He looked around, but didn’t see his guy. He was a little early. He slouched down, pulled his hat a little lower, closed his eyes. Before he could start to doze, there was a sharp rap on the roof of the car. He opened his eyes, straightened up. “Hey,” he said. “You’re early.”

“Where’s the box?”

“Right here.” Joe got out and went around to the trunk. He glanced at the guy and tried not to laugh. Garuccio thought he was badass, but his piggy eyes cracked Moodey up every time. He opened the trunk, pulled out his bag and dug the laptop out of it. “Old as hell, isn’t it? But you know these hackers, always rebuilding stuff.”

“I guess.” Garuccio took the computer, looked at it, flipped it over, flipped it over again. Moodey got the feeling he didn’t know what he was looking at either, exactly. “What about the drive?” the man demanded.

“The what? Oh, this thing.” Moodey brought out the portable hard drive. “Got these little things, too.” Moodey dug around in the bag, brought out the flash drives and SD cards he’d found. “Don’t know if they’re anything.”

Pig Man gestured and he put everything back in the duffle. “That’s it?”

“Yeah. That’s everything.”

“Good.” He held out a wad of bills.

Moodey snagged them, trying not to look too eager. “So, you got another job for me?”

Garuccio looked at him, blinked his little pig eyes. “Yeah. Maybe we can do some business.”

“You got my number.”

“Yeah. I got your number, Moodey.” Garuccio took his computer stuff and wandered away.

Moodey watched him back to his car. Then he pulled out his phone and called his girlfriend. Not his old scary girlfriend, but the new girl, the pretty one with the soft voice. “Hey, baby,” he said, counting the bills with one hand. “Get pretty. I’m comin’ to pick you up.”

 ***

Detective Carter had just gotten back to her desk when Fusco stormed in. “Fusco, you okay?”

“What?” The man was red-faced. He slammed a fat file down on his desk and pulled his chair back so hard it fell over.

“You look mad.”

“Yeah. I guess I am.” He recovered his chair, sat down, started pounding on his keyboard.

“Anything I can help with?”

“No. No.”

“Okay.” Carter sat back, worked on her own report for a moment. She could almost see the steam coming off Fusco. She glanced at the file he’s slammed down. It was yellowed, worn. It was also marked CLOSED. “Old case?”

“Yeah.” He scrawled something on a post-it note and stuck it on the file. Glared at his computer screen, swore, and wrote something else on the same note. He spent a minute reading the screen; it didn’t make him any happier. He shook his head, swore under his breath. Then he stood up, nearly knocking his chair over again. “I gotta go do something. Be back in a while.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Carter shrugged. “Nothing going on here anyhow, for a change.”

“You better knock wood.”

Carter tapped on her desk. “Sure I can’t help?”

Fusco waved the file in frustration. “No. I think I got way more help than I need.”

He stomped out. Carter thought about following him, but it didn’t seem like that kind of problem. She shrugged and went back to checking on perverts.

 ***

John Reese stood in the alley next to the old post office and looked at Chaos again. The café was not busy; a few people milled around inside. Through his camera, Reese could see the big man with the mustache behind the bar. The NYPD squad car had been parked out front when he got there; it was gone now. According to Finch’s surveillance, Christine Fitzgerald was still upstairs, locked behind her heavy-duty security door. Unless someone showed up with a cutting torch, she was safe. 

Sometimes the Machine gave them numbers where the people and problems involved were perfectly straight-forward. Troubled people with serious problems, to be sure, but easy to understand, easy to solve. This obviously wasn’t going to be one of those times. They knew a lot more about Christine Fitzgerald than they had when her number came up, but they weren’t any closer to knowing who was after her or why.

Or who she was after and why.

His phone chirped. “I’m here, Finch.”

“I have the police report on the robbery.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“The officer typed it on his in-car computer and filed it electronically. I was able to download it. I’d thought that might be possible, but I needed to know the precise location of the patrol car and to be standing by when the transmission was sent. You can tell Detective Fusco we don’t require his assistance. ”

“He’ll be heartbroken.”

“Let him down easy,” Finch advised. “We caught a break, Mr. Reese. There’s no mention of security footage in the police report.”

“She didn’t turn it over to them,” Reese said. “Interesting. She was mugged and she let someone break into her apartment. Then she called the police, but she didn’t hand over the surveillance footage. What’s she up to?”

“She did give them a description of the vehicle she believes the thief is driving, with a full license plate number. They’ve issued a BOLO on it.” Finch paused again. “She let them steal a laptop and a hard drive, both of which probably have some kind of lo-jack trackers on them. That’s not mentioned in the police report, either.”

“Which suggests that she’s tracking the computer herself. But then why bother calling the police at all?”

“To make it less obvious that it’s a trap,” Finch suggested.

“She knows she’s in trouble, Finch.”

“Yes. Whatever the Machine is seeing, she’s already aware of it.”

Reese looked up at the iridescent windows again. “How are you doing with our suspects?”

“I have dozens to look at. But no one seems especially promising yet. I’ll call you when I know something.”

“I’ll be here.” Reese shifted, settled his shoulder against the brick wall, and waited.

 ***

Kevin Frey sat at a wide, polished desk, behind a name plate that did not have his real name on it. He’d been there for a week and a half and he still couldn’t get the big executive chair adjusted quite right. It still felt like some other guy’s chair. But he’d get used to it in time.

If he got the time.

The cheap phone in his expensive suit’s pocket vibrated and he grabbed it quickly. “You got it?”

“Geez, keep it in your pants,” Garuccio muttered. “Yeah, I got it.”

“You’re sure it’s the right one?”

“It was the only one there. Figure it’s gotta be the right one.”

Frey frowned across his shiny desk. Then he shook his head. “Bring it down. I’ll meet you out back.”

“Hey,” Garuccio said, “you’re gonna get all my stuff back, right?”

“I told you I would.”

“’Cause I’m losin’ a ton of money here. Every day I’m off-line, my customers are goin’ somewhere else.”

“I’ll get your stuff back,” Frey promised. “Just bring me the equipment. And don’t touch anything, all right?”

“Yeah. You said that before. Don’t see what the big deal is. I know how to use a computer without breakin’ it.”

Frey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He hated dealing with amateurs. “Just … take my word for it. Call me when you get here.”

“On my way.”

Frey put his phone away slowly. Then he spread his hands over the top of his big shiny desk. Maybe he’d get to keep it after all.

 ***

Finch had worked his way through two more of Christine’s clients when the textchat window popped up.

                >RANDOM?      

He hesitated. He hadn’t expected her to catch him so quickly. He didn’t know what to say. Everything he could think of sounded alarming or insane, or both. Finally, he typed back:

                >I’M HERE.

                >CAN YOU HELP ME? PLEASE?

 

Finch cursed, not for the first time, the impersonal letters on the screen that gave him no indication of the emotion behind them.

                >I’LL HELP YOU. WHAT’S WRONG?

Instead of words, she sent a phone number. He already had it, of course, but she didn’t know that. Maybe. He snagged his cell phone and dialed. His hand was shaking, but he tried to keep his voice steady when she answered. “Christine? What’s wrong?”

“I screwed up,” she said. Her voice was very small, and not precisely frightened. Something else. Something worse. “I screwed up something really important, really badly, and I thought I could fix it but now I’m not sure I can and it’s _way_ more important than I thought it was…”

Broken, Finch thought. It wasn’t fear he heard in her words, but brokenness. His heart lurched. He’d heard that tone from her before. “I’ll help you, Christine. Stay where you are. I’m coming for you.”

She took a ragged breath. “I know I don’t have any right to …”

“Christine,” he said firmly, “whatever it is, we can fix it. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Wait for me.”

There was a very long pause. “Okay.”

The phone went dead.

Finch grabbed his jacket and his bag. He felt sick, cold. That tone – he’d never wanted to hear that tone again, not from her, not from anyone. And he had, too many times. It was the voice of no more options, no more hope.

But she was safe, he reminded himself. John was close by, and he’d said her apartment was secure from outside …

He paused long enough to grab his phone again, pressed ‘redial’ as he walked. It rang five agonizing times before she answered. “Random?” She still sounded small, lost.

“I’m on my way. But I want you to do something for me.”

“Okay.”

“Go downstairs to the café.”

“Huh?”

“Go downstairs and wait for me there.”

“Oh.” And then, with a little more comprehension, “I’m not suicidal, I promise. Not yet, anyhow.”

“Humor me. Just go.”

There was a very long pause. Finally, resigned, she said, “Okay.”

“Thank you.”

As soon as she hung up, he called Reese.

 ***

 


	6. Chapter 6

** August 2001 **

Her hacker name was DaisyB, short for Daisy Buchanan. She did not look much like a literary figure to Harold. Certainly more of a Dickens waif than a Fitzgerald heroine, in any case.

Heroine, he thought, watching the girl. Heroin. A funny word, a homonym with two very different meanings. Daisy Buchanan fancied herself the first, especially while she was shooting the second.

She’d come to the pizza shop expecting to meet her dealer. She’d needed a fix then. That had been three hours ago. She was crashing now. Edging toward frantic. It was more psychological than physical, Harold knew. He didn’t see any need to share that knowledge with the girl. She huddled in the corner of the booth, her knees tight against her chest. She’d been twitching when they first caught her; now she practically vibrated. She shivered, yet sweat beaded on her forehead.

She would not look at him. She held her hand over her eyes most of the time; the florescent lights bothered her. She was wearing some kind of vanity contacts, electric green and oversized, that made her eyes look cat-like, alien. Harold guessed that in addition to her withdrawal symptoms, she had a significant eye infection. Occasionally she looked out the window or glared balefully at the men on the security team. There were three of them, one at every exit, and each of them outweighed her at least three to one. She wasn’t getting past them; they’d established that from the beginning. But it was Harold she most feared. She wouldn’t look at him at all.

He could see the outline of the bones in her wrists and arms; her hands were all but skeletal. Her skin was dead-white, brittle-looking. There were bright spots of color on her cheeks; she was probably feverish. Her hair was bright green, to match her contacts, but it hung in a tangled mess around her shoulders. Her lips were pale, except where the cracks in them showed red with blood. Her eyes were dull, hazy. She wore a torn black hooded sweatshirt, equally torn jeans and sneakers held together with duct tape. She smelled like old cigarettes and bright desperation. Like the street.

This pitiful creature, this shivering addict, had hacked into IFT’s system. Into _his_ system.

He wondered if he would have recognized Nathan’s former intern without the laptop.

When Ingram had started up his internship program, he’s insisted on giving every participant a state-of-the-art laptop. Harold had counter- insisted on encrypting every one of them with a digital identity tag. He’d wanted to be able to easily identify any intern who strayed into forbidden areas of the IFT servers. He’d been surprised when one of the tags popped up on the hacker he was chasing. But it led him to the girl’s file, and then in almost a straight line to the girl.

He’d hoped the laptop had been stolen from her. He hadn’t wanted to believe that one of Nathan’s chosen few was attacking his systems. And this one – Nathan’s promising little rock star – he’d wanted to believe that least of all. But they’d found the laptop in her bag, and she hadn’t made any attempt to deny it was hers.

At fourteen she’d been reading The Gulag Archipelago on her lunch break. At seventeen she was dying by her own hand, one filthy injection at a time. 

Harold shook his head and turned his attention back to the laptop.

It told him everything about the pizza shop’s operation. Drug inventories were kept on the same spreadsheets with counts of mozzarella and pepperoni. Names, dates, amounts, credit card numbers. Everything the police would need to convict the enterprising Mr. Mancini and his delivery staff, his customers and his suppliers. All of that held very little interest for Harold. What he wanted was information about what she’d been doing on the side. He knew she’d hacked into IFT, he knew when, and he knew largely how. But the details had been deleted, and nothing he tried on the battered little computer brought them back.

Yet.

His glanced at his watch. Twenty until twelve. By midnight, he predicted, she’d tell him what he wanted to know. If not, he’d take the laptop back to his office and tear it apart. But one way or another, he would know what she’d done and how she’d done it.

He watched her and he waited.

She glanced toward him, dropped her eyes to her bag that sat on the chair beside him. He’d already been through it. A fake drivers’ license and an apparently real library card. Two paperbacks, _Lord of the Flies_ and _Ender’s Game,_ both with library stickers on the spine. Thirty-one dollars and seventy-four cents. A badly-bent pair of glasses. Her fix kit and a small envelope with a tiny amount of powder in it. It wasn’t, Harold gathered, even a whole dose for her. But she wanted it, fiercely.

She saw him watching and hid her eyes.

Fifteen minutes, he decided, and he’d ask her again.

The bell over the front door rang as the door opened and closed. There was movement, a shadow, and then Nathan Ingram’s booming voice. “Harold, what the _hell_ are you doing?”

He swore inwardly. The one person in the world who could screw this up. He slammed the laptop, swept it onto the bench seat beside him, and stood up quickly. “Nathan, you …”

The girl took one look at Ingram and exploded into sound and motion, screeching as she tried to work around the edge of the table. “He kidnapped me! You can’t keep me here like this! I want to go home!”

Harold glared at her and she froze at the very end of the bench. But her voice continued. “I’m a minor. I’m gonna call the cops. You can’t keep me here like this, you pervert. I want to go home!”

“And where would home be, exactly?” he asked her coldly.

She met his eyes now. Her eyes flicked to Ingram, back to him. The other man’s presence emboldened her, but there was something else, too. Not fear, exactly. “You can’t keep me here.”

“Evidently I can.”

“Harold,” Nathan said earnestly, “you can’t …”

He didn’t recognize her, Harold thought with relief. At least not yet. He grabbed Ingram by the arm and pushed him toward the swinging door to the kitchen. The girl moved, but he froze her again with a look. He grabbed her bag on his way past and heard her actually moan with disappointment. She wouldn’t even have run, he thought. She just wants the drugs.

“Are you out of your mind?” Nathan demanded before the door swung shut behind them. “You can’t just hold somebody like this. This is huge trouble, Harold. If her parents find out about this …”

“Her parents are dead,” Harold answered sharply. “No one’s coming for her.”

“Which doesn’t make this any better. What in God’s name are you thinking? You can’t just …”

“She hacked our network, Nathan.”

“She …” He paused in mid-outrage. “ _She_ did? That strung-out little junkie… are you serious?”

“Nathan.”

“You’re sure it was her?”

“Yes.”

“How?” Ingram at least looked alarmed now. “Harold, _how_?”

“That’s what I was about to find out.”

“You don’t _know_?”

“I know the basics. I want the specifics. And she will tell me, very soon, if you don’t screw this up.”

Nathan ran his hand over his face. “Jesus, Harold. How long have you been holding her?”

“Just under three hours.”

“Just … why didn’t you call the cops?”

“And tell them what, Nathan? That that strung-out little junkie, as you so aptly put it, hacked into the most secure computer system in the city?”

“Is that what this about, Harold? Your ego? You’re holding a teenage girl prisoner to protect your _ego_?”

“It’s not my ego.” Half a lie, and he knew his partner knew it, but no matter. “It’s the reputation of our company. If she can hack us, then anyone in the city will think they can get away with it.”

From the front room the girl began shouting. “When this gets out you are in such big trouble! I’m going to the papers, I’m going to tell everybody!”

Harold straightened up. The smart play, from the girl’s point of view, would have been to tell Ingram who she was, to remind him that she’d been an intern. To throw herself on his mercy and enlist him as an ally against Harold. Ingram would be crushed, to see one of his bright stars fallen so far, but he’d probably take her side.

But she hadn’t done it. Either she simply didn’t remember him, which was a possibility given her level of drug usage, or else …

… or else behind her fake green eyes she still had some sense of shame, and she didn’t want him to know, either.

Nathan looked at him. “Harold …”

“I will handle this, Nathan. I _am_ handling this. She can’t hurt us. But I need you to play along.”

The girl shrieked, “You can’t treat me like this. I don’t care how big your company is, the _Times_ can’t wait for stories like this. I’m going to tell them everything. You are in so much trouble!”

“Trust me,” Harold said firmly. He walked back into the dining room. Ingram followed.

The girl was still at the edge of the booth. She retreated just a little when Harold sat back down. Then she focused on Ingram. “You have to let me go. Right now.”

Nathan dragged a chair over from the next table, turned it around backward, and straddled it. He folded his arms on the back and leaned forward, all charm and reason. “What’s your name?”

She glanced at Harold swiftly, then back at Ingram. “Daisy.”

Harold sat back. She wasn’t going to tell him, bless her opiate-soaked heart. And Nathan was likely too thrown off by those alien contacts to figure it out.

“Daisy.  Really?” He gave her a half-smile, the one meant to be sincere and reassuring. “Unusual name. Pretty.” He was in full diplomat mode, smoothing the situation over as he always did. “All right, Daisy. This doesn’t have to be this complicated. Tell us how you got into our system, and we can all get out of here. “

Her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t, Harold thought with grim satisfaction, convinced by the reassuring smile. “I tell you and I can go home?”

“Just tell me how you got in.”

“And I get my bag back?”

“Daisy. Tell me how you hacked us.”

He was completely soothing, reasonable. It was a voice and a manner that had worked on some of wealthiest and most powerful men and women in the world. But it wasn’t working on Chrissy Buchanan. Daisy, he reminded himself. “Promise me,” she insisted.

“Tell us what we want to know, and we all walk out of here.”

She recognized the weasel words and remained silent.

Ingram sighed extravagantly and looked at him. “I don’t know. Are you sure she’s the hacker? She doesn’t seem that bright.”

The girl glanced at Harold again, raised one eyebrow. She was plenty bright enough to not take the bait.  And then, unexpectedly, she sat back, unfolded her arms. “I’m bored,” she announced. “I used the cat door.”

“The what?”

“The cat door. You probably call it something else. Your shortcut, so you don’t have to go through full security protocols on a project in process  ... so, what? Access field?”

“Port hole,” Harold supplied quietly. “And it’s secured.”

“Yeah. It’s half-protected. Bump it and it kicks to full security.”

“Yes.”

“So how did you get in?” Ingram asked.

 She nodded toward her bag. “Let me fix and I’ll tell you.”

“No,” Harold said firmly.

“I’m sick,” she insisted. “I can’t tell you until I get right.”

“No.”

“Tell me about the cat door,” Ingram urged.

She folded her arms over her chest again. A shudder ran through her body, hard, and then another one. She was sweating visibly. She looked around, studied the security men again. Shook her head. “You ever play Ding Dong Ditch when you were a kid?”

“What?”

“ _Were_ you ever a kid?” she asked wearily. “Never mind. I bump the cat door. It locks down. You come in tomorrow and have to go through full security to log in. You look for a threat, there’s nothing there. You reset the door. Then I bump it again. Same thing. Every day.” She studied Ingram for a long moment. “You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

She looked at Harold, then back and forth between the two of them. For the first time her eyes revealed the deep intelligence he’d known she must possess. “Oooooooh,” she finally said. “I get it.”

She was one of very, very few who understood that Nathan Ingram was not brain behind IFT – at least not all of it. Her sudden realization jarred Harold, and he could tell it alarmed his partner, too. “You bumped the cat door,” he answered evenly. “And I reset it.”

She studied him, assessing him in a new light. “Every day. For weeks. Finally you lower the threshold. Same thing, every day. Sometimes even while you’re logged in. Bump the door, lock it down, and you have to log in from the start again. And every time you check, there’s no threat there. Just random traffic. A glitch in the system.”

Harold nodded grimly. He’d figured out this much. But his systems didn’t have glitches, not for long.

“Anybody else would have taken down the threshold entirely. But not you. You’re too careful for that. You tell it to notify you before it activates. And it keeps right on happening. And there’s never a threat, no matter how fast you look.”

Harold nodded. “How did you get in?”

Daisy sighed. She looked around the empty pizza shop again. Looked at Ingram. Dismissed him with her eyes and looked back at Harold. “NSA got a tip. They tried to power-hack you. Knock down the front door with a battering ram. And while you were busy with them, the cat door alerted. For the eighty-seventh time in twenty-nine days. And you told it …”

“Disregard,” Harold pronounced tightly. “I told it to disregard.”

She smiled. “By the time you were done with NSA, I was in.”

He looked out the front window for a moment. The street was still busy, even at this hour. Of course, of course. Clever little thing. He was angry, at her and at himself. But he was also grudgingly impressed.

Ingram cleared his throat. “The NSA thing. That was four days ago.”

“Uh-huh,” Daisy answered smugly. Then she shivered so hard that her elbow banged against the tabletop.

“And what have you been doing all that time?”

“Partying. Tagging stuff. Stealing programs.”

“Harold …”

“It’s all right, Nathan. She hasn’t hurt us.” He’d checked everywhere she’d been. She had stolen a lot of programs, but she hadn’t done any damage. She hadn’t meant to.

“I could have,” Christine reminded him.

“But you haven’t. So what was the point of hacking us?”

She tilted her head, squinting curiously. “To prove I could. But it took too long. I lost the bet.” She stood up rather unsteadily. “I’m going home. Gimme my bag.”

“No.”

She swayed a minute, rocked heel to toe. Glared at Ingram. “You said I could go.”

He stood up, too. He towered over the girl and put on his Full Authority Figure voice. “I said we’d all leave here. Good night.”

He strode toward the door. The girl screamed, “You said I could go!” and launched herself at him. The nearest security man plucked her out of the air from behind, wrapped his arms over hers. She screamed again. “I will burn you down, Ingram! I will hack every computer you own and I will slag them all!”

Nathan looked back, first at the raging girl, then at Harold. “You’re sure about this?”

“I’ll handle it,” Harold repeated calmly.

“We’ll talk later?”

“Of course.”

Harold watched his partner out, then turned to the girl. She was still screaming, but her voice was already getting weaker. She tried kicking, to no effect. She snarled like a feral cat. The security man, Bellows, simply held her. She could not escape and she could not hurt him.

“Get the car,” Harold said. “Miss Buchanan, stop it.”

Her tantrum stopped as suddenly as it had started. There was, he supposed, no point in her display of temper now that Nathan was gone. “Please,” she said reasonably. “Just let me go. Please. I promise I’ll never touch another one of your systems. I promise.”

He studied her a moment. The waxy skin, the broken lips, the bloodshot eyes. The trembling.  Bellows had loosened his grip but he hadn’t released her; it looked now like he was holding her up. She would have promised anything to get to her drugs.

She had hacked his network patiently, carefully, brilliantly, while her brain was awash in heroin. He could only imagine what she might do when she was clean. Nathan had been right about her. And terribly, tragically wrong.

Why hadn’t she told Nathan who she was?

And why hadn’t he?

“Are you gonna call the cops?” She sounded almost hopeful.

“No,” Harold answered. “I’m taking you to a rehabilitation facility.”

She straightened; Bellows tightened his grip. “I am not going to rehab. You can’t make me. You have no right …”

“I have no right,” he agreed, “but I have enough money to make that inapplicable.”

“You son of a bitch …” Her words faded into raging screams again. She struggled harder to escape from Bellows. She didn’t manage it.

“Car’s ready,” one of the other men announced from the door.

Harold nodded. He picked up the girl’s bag, stuffed the laptop inside, and waited. The girl flailed, completely out of control, fearful and angry and trapped. But she also very quickly become exhausted. She didn’t have the reserves to maintain this kind of rage. Like a cheetah, her attempted attack was fast, fully committed and brief.

In another minute, exactly as he’d expected, she slumped in Bellow’s arms.

Wearily, Finch nodded toward the door.

 ***

** 2012 **

“Mr. Reese,” Finch said in his earpiece, “can you see Miss Fitzgerald?”

Reese frowned. “You said she was upstairs.”

“She should be in the café now.”

“How do you know that?” Reese raised his camera and scanned the interior of the shop again. Their target was on a stool at the end of the bar. She’d changed out of the skirt, was back in her customary jeans. She had her tablet in her hands. “She’s here.”

“Good. I’m on my way.”

“What?”

“She called me, John. She asked for my help.”

“She knows we were watching her?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But it doesn’t matter.”

Reese took a deep breath. “This is not a good idea, Finch.”

“You’re probably right.” The phone went dead.

Reese heard the car stop in the alley behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. Fusco got out and walked toward him. “You could have just called me with the case number, Lionel.” He wasn’t in the mood for chatter; he needed to figure out what to do about Finch.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” Fusco’s voice was tight, angry. “I gotta know something right now. What are you doing here? What’s going on with the girl?”

“You know Christine Fitzgerald?” Reese tried not to sound surprised.

“I used to. Kinda. Only that wasn’t her name then. She in trouble?”

“Probably.”

“What kind?”

“I thought we’d settled this part of our relationship, Lionel,” John said calmly. “I ask the questions and you provide the answers.”

Fusco looked away. His face was red. He worked his jaw for a long minute, grinding his teeth. Finally he handed him a yellow note. “There’s the report numbers. Two of ‘em. She got mugged this week, you know.”

“I heard.”

The detective ran his hand over his face to wipe the sweat away. “This burglary report, it says that’s her residence. She’s not really living up there, is she?”

“It’s the only address we have for her.”

“I mean, maybe she’s just using it for an office or something, right?”

“You know her, Lionel. You tell me.”

“I don’t know her. I just …” Fusco threw one hand up, turned and walked back down the alley.

Reese watched him, but didn’t follow. The detective obviously wasn’t leaving. He was thinking about something. Thinking hard. But John knew what Fusco didn’t: The man had already made up his mind. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been there in person. He raised his camera and checked on the girl again. She hadn’t moved. 

After a long moment, Fusco reached behind his back, under his jacket, and pulled out a fat manila file. He walked back to where Reese waited. “If she’s really living up there, then you need to read this.”

John took the folder gingerly; it was slightly damp with Fusco’s sweat. He turned it to look at the tab. “Fitzgerald, Thomas. Her father?” The file was stamped CLOSED in big red letters. “What’s his story?”

“He’s dead.” Fusco took a deep breath. “I shot him.”

Reese looked at him steadily, waited.

“It was a clean shoot,” Fusco continued quickly. “He had hostages, came out with a gun. He had a history. There were a bunch of witnesses. There was nothing else to do. He was gonna kill somebody. We had to shoot him.”

“But?”

Fusco looked toward the café. Worked his jaw again. “The girl, Chrissy, she was just a kid. High school. Her mom was drunk, so we, uh … I went and picked her up from school. To talk him out. She got him to let the hostages go, she was … she just …”

“She saw everything,” Reese guessed grimly.

“She saw everything,” Fusco confirmed.

“She blames you?”

“No. No. She knew he was crazy. She said it wasn’t my fault.” He shook his head. “I’m tellin’ you, John, if you could have seen her … this little girl with this … she was so …” He stopped, seemed to struggle for the right words. Finally he gave up. “Doesn’t matter. The thing is, the shooting went down right in front of the bar.” He gestured. “Right there in the street.”

“In front of Chaos?” Reese asked, surprised.

“Used to be called Happy Hours. But it’s the same building. So you see what I’m sayin’, right? If Chrissy’s living up there, then she’s definitely in trouble. But I don’t think it’s the kind of trouble you can get her out of.”

Reese took a deep breath. Fusco was right; it was very troubling. But the Machine didn’t kick out numbers of people who going insane. Unless that insanity would lead them to hurt or kill others. He didn’t even want to consider how Finch’s creation might figure something like that out. And put that together with Finch’s sudden insistence on meeting with her …

But it didn’t track right. She’d owed the café, and probably been living above it, for several years. It was an unhealthy choice, but it wasn’t a new one. “She’s all right, Lionel,” he said. “I watched her all morning. She owns her own company, makes plenty of money. Travels, takes college classes. She’s a little paranoid, maybe, but she’s not crazy. She’s not falling apart.”

The detective looked at him. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Fusco exhaled. Relaxed a notch. “She still shouldn’t be living there.”

“Maybe you should tell her that.”

“Not sure she’d listen to me. It’s been a long time.”

“Worth a try,” Reese answered. “But it’ll have to wait until we get the current situation sorted out.”

“Sure. The mugging, the break-in. What’d she get into, anyhow?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Fusco stood very still for a moment, staring at the cafe. Reese could see the tension in him still. “What else should we know?” he finally prompted.

It took a minute. “After the shooting, she got kinda … sideways.”

“That’s not surprising,” John allowed. He already knew the answer, but he let Fusco tell him. “How’d it take her?”

“Drugs.” Fusco pronounced it as a curse. “And not any kind of, you know, experimenting to take the edge off. She went pretty much straight hard-core. Grass, coke, acid, speed. Anything she could lay her hands on. Finally ended up on heroin. A _lot_ of heroin.”

Fusco’s phone rang. He took it out, glanced at the number, silenced the ringer.

“How’d she support her habit?” Reese asked.

“How do you think?” Fusco answered. “The usual, at first. Petty theft, shoplifting, purse snatching. We never caught her hooking, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.”

“And yet she doesn’t have a juvie record.”

“No,” the detective agreed. “She doesn’t.” He shrugged. Covering for the minor crimes of a young girl were the least of his sins and they both knew it. “Anyhow, there was this dealer, Mancini. Street-level guy, but connected. Had a pizza place in the Village. If you knew how to order right, you could get you fix delivered with your pie.”

“Enterprising.”

“Yeah. But then Chrissy partnered up with him and she went one better. Set him up on the internet. Web site, menu, on-line ordering. Enter a coupon code to order your drugs, get it delivered, and run the whole thing through on your credit card.”

Reese raised an eyebrow. “Tech support for a drug dealer.”

“Yeah. He kept her high, she kept his business running. And it ran smooth for a while. Made some serious bank. Word was that the operation got some attention up the food chain, that even the Don noticed. Our late friend Zambrano. But by then she was too fried to be any use to him.”

He didn’t doubt that Fusco was telling him the truth, but it was hard to hear. “So what happened?”

“9/11 happened,” Fusco answered.  His phone rang again; he silenced it without even looking.

“And?”

“I don’t know how it went down, but she got straightened out. I saw her a couple weeks after and she was clean. She cut her ties – Mancini got busted around then anyhow – changed her name, went legit.” Fusco almost smiled. “Hasn’t been in trouble since, as far as I can tell. And I, you know, keep an ear out for her.”

“So maybe someone’s trying to drag her back into the business,” John mused, mostly to himself.

“After all this time?”

“People have long memories.” He thought specifically about Carl Elias. He was certainly running the mob from his prison cell; he might have noticed Fitzgerald’s potential benefit to his business interests. But Fusco was right. After so much time, it was a very long shot. “Thank you for bringing me this,” he said. “It may help.”

“Yeah.” The detective looked embarrassed. “Look. This kid, she’s been through a lot. A hell of a lot. And like I said, she had some sketchy years. But she got herself turned around. She’s a good kid.”

His phone rang a third time. “You should answer that,” John said.

“Yeah. This damn day job.” He stepped away and answered the call.

Reese waited, gazing across the street at the windows of the top floor apartment. The police report was heavy and damp in his hand. He’d read it when Fusco left, but he’d learned pretty much everything he needed to know about Christine Fitzgerald.  She’d made bad choices, and then she’d made better choices. Like everyone.

And maybe those bad choices were coming back to hurt her. Or maybe she was making new bad choices. That remained to be seen.

Fusco put away his phone and came back. “Witness wants to change his story. He can wait, if you need me here.”

Reese shook his head. “She’s all tucked in. I’ll look after her.”

“If you want my help, anything at all, you let me know.”

He watched Fusco leave. Then he checked on the girl. She still hadn’t moved. She seemed to be ignoring everyone around her. As at the diner, she was folded up, making herself small.

The girl with a very visible life, and an equally invisible one. He remembered how cleanly she had played the rich men from Wall Street. He thought about her security windows, her steel doors with the heavy-duty locks. There was a way to put all those pieces together, and Reese didn’t like the picture it made. 

But there were pieces that didn’t fit into that picture, either.

Finch was on his way. She’d crooked her little finger at him and he’d come running. A pretty woman with a book in her hand could trump Harold’s common sense every time; being drugged by the woman who was not Jordan Hester hadn’t taught him a thing. And he had a particular soft spot for this one.

Reese shook his head. He was going to have to be paranoid enough for both of them.

 ***

Kevin Frey’s phone rang as he was walking through the lobby. He grabbed it, checked the number. Swore under his breath. Answered it. “What?” he snapped.

“Where are my pictures?” the woman snarled.

“They’re safe.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Frey looked around the lobby. He didn’t see any unfamiliar faces. Yet. “I told you, the drive got corrupted. I’m recovering the files as fast as I can.”

“We need them now.”

“Working on it,” Frey said through clenched teeth. “I’ll send them as soon as they’re clean.”

There was a pause; Frey could almost hear his boss considering. “Bring it in. We’ll get a tech team on it.”

“I can’t do that,” he snapped. “If I take it out of here, someone will notice.”

“Send the files over.”

“I just told you they’re corrupted.”

There was another pause. “Tonight. I want the files tonight, corrupted or not.”

Frey blew out a relieved breath. “I’ll do what I can.”

“You’ll do what you’re told.” The phone went dead.

Outside on the sidewalk, Frey looked around again. Such a simple damn thing. And that idiot Dover had let it become so complicated. He’d left him alone for two damn weeks and he’d screwed up everything.

His side ached. Having your appendix out was no big deal any more, they said, but it still hurt.

But he could still fix this. She never needed to know that he’d lost the files. He could put everything back the way it was. He could keep his nice office and his shiny desk. It would all be okay.

He walked around the corner of the building and down the block. There was a pimped-out silver Cadillac parked in the back alley, under the ‘No Parking’ sign. Frey shook his head; could the man be any more of a cliché? Or any more obvious? He glanced around again. No one was watching him.

Garuccio was leaning against the car, his arms folded over his chest. “Hey.”

“Where’s the drive?”

“I got it,” Garuccio answered. He didn’t unfold his arm.

Frey hated the man’s eyes. They were too close together, too close to his nose. They made him look like a pig. “Can I have it, please?” he asked with exaggerated courtesy.

“I give you this drive,” the man said, “how do I know you give me what I need?”

“I told you I’d …”

“Yeah, I know what you told me. You told me a lot of things. You told me the business would run smooth. And I been off-line for a lot of time now.”

“If you want me to fix that,” Frey growled, “you’re going to have to give me the drive.”

Garuccio finally unfolded his arms. He opened the back door of the car and brought out a duffle bag. Frey reached for it, but the man pulled it back. He unzipped the bag and brought out just the external hard drive. “You get this,” he said. “I’m keeping the laptop until I see some results.”

“And what if what I need is on the laptop?”

“Then you call me and we meet somewhere that I can watch you work.”

Frey sighed. “You’re wasting time.”

“Maybe so.”

“You said time was money, right? Just give me everything. I’ll tell you when you’re back on-line.”

“Uh-uh. Get me results, then you get the rest.”

Frey looked up at the sky for a moment. It was cloudy, but it wouldn’t rain. He was surrounded by idiots. First Dover and now this gangster wanna-be. He was used to being the smartest person in the room, but lately the weight of the stupid was killing him.

Maybe literally, he realized. If the files he needed weren’t on the hard drive, if he couldn’t get the pictures back to his superiors …

He shook his head. He was imagining things. It was the right drive, and it was all he needed. “Fine. I’ll let you know if I need the laptop.” He took the hard drive. “Now get out of here before someone starts asking why I’m meeting with a pimp.”

Garuccio smirked at him. His pig-like eyes disappeared when he smiled. “See you around, smart guy.”

Frey tucked the drive under his arm and hurried back inside.

Before he even got to his office, Karen Deiter hurried toward him. She was a woman of middle years and conservative dress, and despite her title of administrative assistant, she seemed to have a lot of authority. “Mr. Getty, you’re late for the seminar.”

Frey flinched. He’d forgotten all about the idiotic seminar. “Don’t have time.”

“It’s mandatory,” she reminded him. “Mr. Campanella’s looking for you. He sent me to find you.”

Frey swore under his breath. He was missing critical files, and that moron was going to make him attend a diversity seminar? “This is critical. I don’t have time.”

She stared at him. “I’m not going back there without you.” She dropped her chin. “You haven’t been in this job long enough to blow him off.”

The woman had been with the company a long time. She knew what she was talking about. It would suck up his whole aftern **o** on, but if he was going to keep this cushy job he’d have to play the game. Besides, everything he needed should be right on the drive. It should be okay now. Better not to draw attention to himself. “You’re right,” he said apologetically. He went into his office and stuck the drive into a drawer. “You’re absolutely right. Thank you.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

Finch got out of the car and looked over the café. It looked different by daylight. Less vintage, somehow. Less romantic. The building was old, but the windows were new, the trim and sign freshly painted. It was also a lot quieter.

He forced himself not to look around for Reese. He would be nearby.

John did not approve, Finch knew, of his being there. But he didn’t understand about Christine. Finch could not have told her ’no’, not with that tone in her voice. In an odd way, he was pleased that she’d called him.

He went inside.

Christine was sitting on a stool at the end of the old bar. She had tablet against her chest, her arms wrapped around it. There was movement around her, customers coming and going, tables being cleared, but the woman was absolutely still. Waiting.

She lit up when she saw him. She didn’t smile, but her face softened, grew hopeful. He hurried across the café towards her. Before he was half-way there, though, something changed. Her expression grew hard, withdrawn. She curled her arms back around herself. She seemed suddenly wary, afraid. And most puzzling, she looked _disappointed_.

Finch paused. Then he glanced over his shoulder.

John Reese had walked in behind him.

Finch stared at him. He couldn’t imagine why he’d come out of hiding. Christine obviously recognized him from earlier. And she had shut down on both of them.

Reese merely nodded, and they walked together to where the girl was waiting.

“Christine,” Finch said carefully, “this is my associate, Mr. Reese. Mr. Reese, Miss Fitzgerald.”

She looked back and forth between them. Those blue eyes, as discerning as ever. But so guarded now. Heartbroken. She took a deep breath. “I don’t have it,” she announced quietly, coldly. “If I did have it I wouldn’t give it to you. And if I’m lying and I do have it, it’s hidden and even you aren’t good enough to find it.” She shook her head, just once. “And how the hell did _you_ end up as a bottom-feeder like this?”

Finch glanced swiftly at Reese; he had no answer, either. “Christine, listen carefully, because I’m not sure I’ve ever said this before: I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Her eyes flicked to Reese, then back. “I don’t have it,” she said again. Her voice became bitter, angry. “And I’m not some frightened little junkie anymore, so take your gorilla and get out.”

“We’re here to help you,” Reese said calmly.

“By tapping my phone?”

“Your life may be in danger, Christine,” Finch said. “We’re trying to protect you.”

“I don’t _have it_ ,” she insisted. “And if I did …” She took a deep breath. “I can’t let it slide. Not even for you. If I can find a way to get it back I will, and I’ll flip it to the police in a heartbeat. So take your friend and your network and go. Go as far as you can. Because once I get it back I’m coming after you.”

Finch shook his head. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She stared at him for a long moment. The eyes. Under all the emotions, the piercing intelligence. She unfolded her arms, tapped at her tablet. “This,” she said, holding it out to them. “This is yours, right?”

He took the tablet. Reese moved to look over his shoulder. They both glanced at video playing on the little screen. And then both looked quickly away. “What is that?” Finch asked, repelled.

“It’s a man and a miniature donkey,” she answered simply.

A man and a miniature donkey doing something that was probably illegal and certainly immoral. “It’s awful.” His stomach roiled. He handed the tablet back, wiped his fingertips on his jacket.

“I pulled it off your network,” Christine said.

“No,” he answered firmly. “Wherever you got that, it’s not mine. I promise you, I don’t have anything to do with that.”

The blue eyes considered him again.

“Is that what this is about?” Reese asked. “Pornography?” She nodded. “And that’s what’s on the hard drive? What they’re trying to get back?”

“I told you. It’s gone.”

“Where did you get it?” Finch asked.

“From your friend Dover.”

“I don’t know any Dover, and I didn’t have anything to do with _that_.” He gestured to the tablet.

“Then why was he following me? Why did he try to tap my phone?”

“To keep you under surveillance,” Reese told her. “To keep you safe.”

She looked him up and down again, shook her head.

“You said that you knew Random was engaged in some high calling,” Finch reminded her. “Right now that higher calling is you. You’re in danger. We’re trying to identify the threat and eliminate it.” He glanced at Reese. “We tried to accomplish that without alarming you. Without letting you know about it. That was clearly a mistake; I should have realized that you’d be aware of any such attempt. But your life is in danger ...”

“You’re wrong,” she said swiftly. “It’s not me. It’s not my life. It’s the boy.”

Finch’s mind spun. What had he missed? “What boy?”

“Hey!” The barista, Zubek, loomed up behind Reese. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Take it easy,” Reese said. He put his hands up in front of him, in a gesture that Finch knew was meant to seem peaceful but actually let him get his hands clear of obstructions in case he wanted to throw a punch. 

“This is the guy, Scottie,” Zubec said. ”The guy I told you about.”

“I know,” she answered.

“I can take him.”

“I don’t think you can,” Reese answered warningly.

Finch tried to step in – verbally, not physically. “Gentlemen …”

Christine snapped, “Davey, no!”

Finch turned his head. The smaller barista had both hands under the bar. It was immediately clear to him, as he knew it was to Reese, that Davey was reaching for a gun. But he had frozen at the woman’s voice. Very slowly, he backed away, brought his hands to rest on his hips.

When Finch turned back, Christine was staring at him. The coldness had melted from her expression, replaced by a desperate, unreasoning hope. “Make me believe you,” she said, very quietly. “I don’t care if you lie. I have to help the boy and I don’t know what else to do. Just make me believe you.”

 _What boy?_ he thought again. _Her brother? Her son? Who was he? And how did I miss him?_  For a moment words eluded him. What could he possibly say? Her life depended on his ability to convince her. You trusted me once before, he wanted to say, but that wasn’t true. She hadn’t trusted him; he’d simply used his wealth and hired brute strength to force her into rehab. That it had ended well was beside the point …

“Your life,” he said. “Your life and every good thing in it. That’s what you said you owed me. Is that still true?”

She blinked at him, hurt, as if he’d slapped her. But she nodded.

“I want to trade that. Everything you owe me, I will trade. For one day. _This_ day. You don’t have to believe me. Just give me this day. And then we’re even, whatever happens.”

“You can’t …”

“Christine. That’s what I want. That’s what your life and every good thing in it is worth to me.”

After a moment she took a deep breath. “Igor,” she said, looking at the big barista, “Mr. Reese is going to be our friend, at least for today.” She looked them both over. “If this goes south, you can bring in the young Russians and have at him tomorrow. But you’re going to need all of them.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re wrong.” She looked at Finch again. “And this is Mr. Finch. Give him whatever he wants.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah. Why?”

She studied him for another moment. “Because if he’s lying I’m going to slash my own throat and it won’t matter anyhow.” She shifted, gestured. “Gentlemen?”

“Wait,” Zubec said.

“Igor …”

“Just _wait_ , Scottie,” he insisted. He grabbed her arm, pulled her into the back office, and closed the door.

Finch glanced at Reese while they waited. “A bit overzealous, aren’t we, Mr. Reese?”

“This place used to be a bar, you know.”

“Obviously.”

“It used to be The Happy Hours bar.”

He felt his stomach coil into a hard ball. “Where her father was killed?”

Reese nodded. “Right out front. And her friend Igor? He was one of her father’s hostages.”

Finch glanced at the closed door. “Oh.”

“She seems to be a nice girl who stumbled into trouble,” Reese said, “and maybe she’s exactly what she seems to be. And maybe she’s a not-so-nice girl who’s in over her head. And maybe she’s a very troubled girl, and when you walked into her coffee shop last week she finally snapped.” Reese shrugged. “I don’t know which one of those is true, and neither do you. And until we do, she is not taking you behind a door that I can’t kick down.”

Harold started to argue, and then simply stopped. As much as he hated to admit it, Reese’s perception of the situation was probably much clearer than his was. He nodded  grimly. “All right,” he said. “And … thank you.”

They waited for the girl.

 ***

The entire staff was required to attend the seminar. Campanella even brought in a temp to cover for the receptionist. It was supposed to be about diversity, Frey knew, but all he’d heard in the first half hour was about respecting women in the workplace. It was all in response to Dover and his little smut collection. But Dover had been fired, and the rest of the staff had no idea why.

Frey glanced at Campanella. His boss, supposedly. The idiot had no idea that Frey had another boss, a much more dangerous boss, at a much more lucrative and interesting job.

The seminar was reassuring, in one way. It meant that Campanella had no idea how far the problem really went. All he’d seen was Dover’s part of it, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. He was a nice guy, Frey thought. Too nice to see past the tip of his own nose. That was just how Frey liked his bosses.

On the other hand, he had to get into that box. It was probably in the same shape as it had been when the woman had taken it out of the building, but maybe not. If she’d changed the password or encrypted anything, it would take a while to open it. If she’d erased anything … he didn’t even want to think about it.

He looked around the room. Campanella met his eyes, nodded encouragingly. It was impossible for him to sneak out. He was the new golden boy.

There was no point in worrying about it. He would get to the box as soon as the seminar was over. If she’d erased anything, he could probably recover it. If he couldn’t…

He shook his head firmly. Everything would be okay. It had to be.

 ***

There was an old elevator in what Reese had taken for a closet, the kind with two gates that had to be closed by hand. The three of them got on it. Zubec glared at them until they were out of sight. He might, Reese thought, be a handful. He was big enough, and he looked like he knew how to handle himself.

Then he dismissed the thought and focused on the woman.

“Who is the boy?” Finch asked. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Christine answered. Her voice was breathless. She was very pale, and her lips were blue. “Zelda found him.”

“Who’s Zelda?”

The elevator reached the top floor. Finch opened the gates and the girl took a few steps into the little lobby. There was a door there, heavy steel with the serious lock, exactly like her back door. Christine stopped, made no attempt to open the door. She swayed slightly.

They were losing her. Reese moved around in front of her. “It’s harder than it looks, you know.”

“Huh?” Her eyes were glassy; she blinked repeatedly, but they didn’t clear.

“Slashing your own throat,” he explained. “I mean, it’s easy enough to do, but getting it right, so you bleed out before the wound clots, that’s tricky.”

“Mr. Reese …” Finch began.

“If you’re serious about it, you’d be better off using the gun under the bar. It’s a twelve-gauge, right? Sawed off, just like your dad used?”

 In the instant that followed, Reese learned two very important things about their client. The first was that given the choice between fainting and fighting, Christine Fitzgerald would fight. The second was that someone had taught her to throw a punch, and taught her well. She barely telegraphed, just a shift of her feet, a flex in her knees, and then she came around at him, swung not from the shoulder but from the hip. It was smooth, compact, faster than he expected. Every ounce of power she had was behind the fist that flashed toward him. A fist, he noted, not an open slap. And she didn’t try to hit him in the jaw; she aimed at his throat, where the impact would do the most damage.

She wasn’t a big girl, and not particularly strong. But Cara Stanton hadn’t been large, either, and Reese had seen her lay out a man twice her size. Christine wasn’t in Stanton’s league, not by a long shot, but she had the right idea. 

He caught her fist in his palm and closed his fingers over her hand. Her breathing grew heavy; the color flooded back to her cheeks.

In that second instant he learned two more things. She’d known she wasn’t going to hit him before she’d taken the swing. She hadn’t pulled the punch, she’d thrown the best she had, but she’d known it wouldn’t connect.

And she wasn’t afraid of him.

That last realization caught him off guard. He’d already seen her size him up, first as Finch’s gorilla and then as compared to the much larger Zubec. It wasn’t that she underestimated his abilities. She seemed to have an unusually good understanding of them. But she had guessed – no, _knew_ – that he wouldn’t hurt her, at least not without a lot more provocation than she’d offered.

Her eyes were clear again, and he could almost feel her looking right through him. She recognized the monster within him. But she understood too that she had no reason to fear it. It was that simple for her.

_How do you know?_

Finch said, “Mr. Reese!”

“There’s our girl.” He opened his hand and released hers. “She looked better with a little color, don’t you think?”

“Stop it,” Finch said. He moved to put his arm around her, but Christine shook him off. She cupped one hand over the top of the door lock, to block it from their view, and keyed in the code. There were seven numbers. The door clicked open.

Reese quickly cataloged the floor plan of the apartment. The door opened at the side of the main room. To his left was the little kitchen, separated by a breakfast bar. Next to it was a big space with a bare floor that should probably have been the dining area. It had bookcases against the wall, floor to ceiling, divided in the middle, ten feet wide total. They were completely full of books – precisely arranged by size. There was an office chair, high-backed, sturdy, against the wall, but no other furniture.

Directly across from the door was the window that had been open when the burglar came in. By its location, he knew it was over the fire escape. It was tightly closed now.

To the right was a fairly standard living room, two big chairs and a couch, a TV and a stereo. At the back of the room was a short hallway with four doors off it – bedrooms, Reese guessed, and a bathroom, plus the interior side of the steel back door. By the back door there was a stand with two umbrellas and a golf club. He glanced behind him. There was a similar stand by the front door.

As a defensive weapon, a golf club was a better choice than a baseball bat, because it concentrated the force of the swing more effectively.

A girl with golf clubs was unlikely to also have a gun.

Christine kicked her shoes off right inside the door, clearly out of habit. “Mr. Reese,” she said clearly, “I’m sorry I tried to hit you.”

No excuses, he noted. No qualifiers. Just a simple apology. Reese nodded, gave her a little smile. “No problem.” He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was absurdly neat, with everything in it lined up, the interior sparkling. He closed it and opened the freezer. It was similarly tidy. He moved on to the cupboards.

“What are you looking for?” she inquired mildly.

“Drugs, guns, whatever.”

Finch started to say something again, then thought better of it. In any case, the young woman didn’t seem to need his protection. 

“Ah. I don’t have either, but tell me what your sweet tooth is and I can probably hook you up.”

Reese nodded. In the cupboard above the single-cup coffee brewer, there were six varieties of coffee – from dark-roast to double espresso – and two kinds of tea. There were also roughly ten pounds of assorted chocolate. She didn’t look like a hacker, but only the Cheetos were missing from the basic hacker diet.

“And for what it’s worth,” she continued, “if I did have them you couldn’t find them.”

He closed the cupboard and looked at her. “That sounds like a challenge.”

She shrugged. “Knock yourself out.” She’d already let one strange man search her apartment; a second one hardly seemed to matter to her.

Reese scanned the room again. Aside from the small and now empty desk, there was no sign of any computer equipment.

Finch had noticed the same thing. “Where do you work?”

Christine got an odd expression on her face, a blend of reluctance and mischief. She walked over to a wall switch next to the bookshelf. It looked like a standard fixture, light switch on the top, outlet on the bottom. There was what looked like a baby-safe plug in the outlet side. But when she pressed her thumb against it, it glowed green. And then the shelves started to move.

In near-silence, the bookshelves parted in the middle and moved apart sideways, then cornered and slid to a stop facing each other, at right angles to the wall they’d vacated, ten feet apart. Behind them was a slender counter with two keyboards, a second set of shelves, and a whole rack of computers.

“Ahhh,” Finch said quietly, “someone watched classic Trek.”

Christine smiled, small and wistful. “Never had much use for Kirk, but I loved Gary Seven.”

There was another thumb pad just over the counter. Christine activated it and a screen unrolled from the top of each bookcase. They looked like standard projection screens, six feet wide by four feet high, but once they were fully deployed they made a snapping sound, turned clear, and began to glow like touchscreens.

“These are from ScionTec, aren’t they?” Finch tapped one; it echoed, solid. “I heard there were issues with the beta version.”

“They caught fire,” Christine confirmed. “Rather impressively. And the gamma version smoked. Delta version quit working in three days. This is epsilon. It’s not as robust as I’d like, and it’s a little sluggish. But it doesn’t try to burn the place down.”

“Cool toys,” Reese said. “You know, though, that all I’d have to do is cut off one of your thumbs to access your whole system.”

Finch groaned.

“Nope,” Christine answered calmly.  “If my thumb doesn’t have a pulse when it hits one of those buttons, the hard drives slag in ten seconds.”

“Why does a girl like you need security like this?”

She considered. “Did you ever own a sports car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever actually need to drive a hundred and forty miles an hour?”

“A couple times,” Reese allowed.

“Oh.” She paused. “I expected that analogy to hold up better.” She shrugged, looked at the ceiling and called, “Zelda, light it up.” The whole system sprang to life.

“Zelda?” Finch asked.

“Frequently irrational and utterly co-dependent. What else would I call her?”

“What track today, Scottie?” the computer asked. The voice was female, soothing and with a mild British accent. It sounded completely human.

“No music, Zelda.”

“No music?” the computer asked. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

“I want you to stop being a smart-ass, Z.”

“I only do what I’m programmed for.”

“Your computer is programmed for sarcasm?” Reese asked.

“Naturally,” she answered. “All right, Z. Let’s get back to it. Where is Mary now, and where’s Honey?”

“Your computer components have names as well?” Finch asked in a carefully neutral tone. 

Reese turned away, to look through the little drawers of an end table and to hide his grin. Finch, who called his greatest achievement ‘The Machine’ only because he had to call it something, clearly had trouble with the woman’s habit of treating computers like people.

The screen to the right lit up with a city street map. There was a green X over the apartment, and about thirty blocks away a red X with a circle around it. It was not moving.

Christine shrugged. “The laptop is named Mary Mallon.”

“Typhoid Mary,” Finch answered. “And how many viruses is Mary carrying?”

“Two hundred and seventeen. Viruses, worms, Trojan horses. Everything I could find.”

“It’s unlikely to be successful in crippling their system.”

“I know. It’s just shiny.” She tapped the left screen. “Zelda, display Mary’s file list.” The list appeared, and Finch stepped over to study it.

“Shiny?”

“Distracting. A shiny object to draw their attention. Zelda, where’s Honey?” she asked again.

“Honey is inactive at this time.”

“Damn it.” Christine glared at the projected map. “They wanted it so bad, why are they screwing around now?”

“Lo-jack?” Reese asked.

Christine nodded, then shook her head. “The same concept, but the home-cooked version.”

She opened a drawer and pulled out what looked like two slender copper bracelets. She put them on her wrists and waved her right hand; a light appeared at her fingertips, a red hovering projection of a qwerty keyboard. Reese looked up; there were two tiny projectors on the ceiling that moved to follow the bracelets. Christine moved her fingertips over the lights -- numbers, letters, symbols.  She got another pair of bracelet and offered them to Finch.

He took them, turned them in his hand, gave them back. “No. Thank you.” He rolled the chair over to the keyboards on the narrow ledge, but remained standing. “Tell us about the boy.”

She took a deep breath. “Zelda, left screen, show them the boy.”

A blurred picture came up. It was a very close-up shot of a young boy’s face. He was five or six years old, with had black hair, dark eyes, olive skin. His head was tilted to the right. It was impossible to see anything in the background; it was probably a single frame of video, rather than a photo.

The expression on his face was heartbreaking. He was obviously screaming. His eyes were full of terror and pain. Tears ran down his cheeks.

After a moment, Finch asked, very quietly, “Where is he, Christine?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice cracked; she had gone pale again. “The picture’s off the box, but … I destroyed it. I don’t know how to find him. I can’t …” She stopped. “Please help me. Help _him_.”

“I will,” he answered. He put his hand on her shoulder, and this time she didn’t pull away. The two of them stood and stared at the picture. It mesmerized them.

Paralyzed them.

Reese stepped closer and tapped the screen. The picture vanished. “All right,” he said briskly. “Start at the beginning. Where did the box come from?”

“It was on the desk of an IT managed named Larry Dover.”

“Where?”

She hesitated, glanced at Finch. “The company doesn’t matter.”

“If we can leave your clients out of it we will,” Finch promised. “But we need to know.”

Christine nodded. “Venture East Financial.”

“They were never a client of yours.”

“How do you know…” She stopped herself. “Never mind. Sam Campanella was my first client.”

“And this box was at his company?” Reese pressed.

“Yes. But he’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m pretty sure, yes. Although … God knows my judgment isn’t very good this week.”

“How did you meet him?” Finch asked. ”He doesn’t seem like the cybercafé type.”

“Neither do you,” Christine pointed out. “Six, seven years ago, one of Campanella’s employees accused him of sexually assaulting her in his office. But she didn’t call the police; she said if he gave her five million dollars she’d just go away.”

“Blackmail,” Reese said.

“Yeah. And not very clever blackmail. Sam Campanella is …” She looked to Finch. “Do you know him?”

“I may have met him once or twice,” he answered. His voice told Reese he was lying. “I know his reputation, though.”

“Campanella’s a rare bird,” she told Reese. “He’s deeply religious. And profoundly married. So the first thing he did was call his wife. And then his pastor. And then his lawyer. They found out this woman had been playing the same game all over town, usually walking away with nuisance money. She ended up in jail.”

“You think she’s involved?” Now that Reese had her talking, he resumed his cursory search of the living room, but he listened to every word.

“No. That was all before I knew him. But after that, Sam decided he wanted a surveillance system in his office.  It was the only place in the company that didn’t have one. But he wanted it private, off the network, and he didn’t want any of his employees to know about it.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t ask, but I got the impression that he and his wife use the office to get a little time away from the kids. Which is actually kinda sweet.” She shrugged. “Anyhow. His wife was in a Bible study group with my librarian. She introduced us and I put a camera system in Sam’s office. And then, being me, I poked around in his network a little bit.”

“And you found holes in the security,” Finch predicted.

“Big ones. I showed him where. He offered me a job. I told him no. But he introduced me to one of his friends. And that’s how Cassandra got started.”

“And you’ve gone peer-to-peer ever since,” Finch said.

“Yes.” She looked at the right screen again. The box still hadn’t appeared. “When you showed up here last week, I got to thinking about things. About gratitude, about people who had helped me that I’d never really thanked properly. Campanella was one of them. ”

Reese caught Finch’s eye, knew they were thinking the same thing. It was a small connection between Finch’s visit to the café and Christine’s Number coming up, but it was clean and logical. Finch wasn’t cause, just catalyst. Maybe.

He moved into the bathroom and swiftly checked the drawers and cupboards. As in the kitchen, everything was unnaturally neat. There was a hugely overstocked first aid kit in one side of the linen closet. There was also a small wooden box. He opened it with some concern; it contained latex gloves and alcohol wipes, but also an assortment of sterile disposable acupuncture needles. The only drugs in the bathroom were the over-the-counter variety. He moved to the bedroom, still listening to the woman’s story. The bed was not only made, but it was boot camp tight.

“So I called him,” Christine continued. “Just to touch base, to tell him thank you. We chatted a little, and he mentioned that his systems were running like a two-legged dog. All kinds of slow-downs, freezing up, error messages, spam. Classic virus behavior. He wasn’t getting answers from Dover, and Dover’s assistant, who he thought was pretty sharp, was on sick leave. Had his appendix out. So I offered to take a look. And the first thing I saw was this box. A stand-alone external hard drive, three terabytes, on Dover’s desktop. Not on the company inventory. Protected. So I hacked it.”

“And it was full of pornography,” Finch guessed.

“Yeah.”

Reese returned to the hallway. “Isn’t that one of your rules?” he asked. “Everybody has porn?”

“Not like this. I showed you, it’s not any sort of standard porn. It all contains animals. Specifically barnyard animals.” Her cheeks went pink. “When I first found it, I ran all the search terms I could think of to make sure it _wasn’t_ kiddie porn. Children, child, girls, boys, young, youth … finally tried _kids_.” She shuddered again. “I still hear those little goats in my sleep. But there were no children. Not there.” She shook her head. “It was … shocking’s not the right word. Stupefying. And it worked. I got stupid. All I thought about was how fast I could get rid of it.” 

“That’s an understandable reaction,” Finch said. “It’s what I would have done.”

She shook her head. “You would have thought it through before you actually did anything. I just reacted.”

Reese went back into the bedroom. There was a beaver-tailed sap under the girl’s mattress, black leather, filled with buckshot. He nodded approvingly and put it back. If Finch provoked the woman enough to make her sap him, he had it coming.

“For as skeezy as Dover was, he was still an IT guy. His box was sending a regular backup every night, to a subscription cloud site call SexStorm. But it was automated and he wasn’t paying attention to it. The FBI shut SexStorm down a couple weeks ago. So the box defaulted to backing up on Venture East’s servers.”

“It was bleeding into the regular operations,” Finch guessed. “Causing the symptoms that Campanella saw.”

“Yeah. Not the porn itself, but all the crap that was coming in with it. The system was mainlining viruses.”

Reese crossed the hall to the second bedroom. It was very sparsely furnished, just a daybed, a small desk, an empty dresser, and of course more bookshelves.

“I called Campanella,” she continued. “We met at the office and I showed him what I’d found. He was sick about it. And he was right onboard with my ‘just get rid of it’ solution. Some of it’s illegal, probably – cruelty to animals, maybe, but it’s not clean-cut. He didn’t want to get the company involved. Of course I couldn’t just reformat the entire company’s backup data. So I sequestered the porn, erased it, and shredded the remnants. Then I encrypted everything.”

“So it’s gone,” Reese said. He moved back into the main room.

“It’s still there, technically, but it can’t be recovered.”

“Are you sure?” He looked to Finch. “Some kind of scanning program, maybe? Review the available data fragments … “

Christine shook her head. “You’re thinking about paper through a shredder. Think meat through a grinder. It’s like trying to make hamburger back into steak.”

“What did you do with the original drive?” Finch asked.

“We took a screen cap of the file names and saved five three-minute samples. Lawsuit protection. Then we drove the box out to Fresh Kills and burned it with thermite.”

Finch seemed unsurprised. “Why? There are much simpler ways of disposing of it.”

“Campanella was rattled. I mean, so was I, but … sometimes a man like him needs a big hot fire to get right with the world.”

Worth remembering, Reese thought, that their pretty little girl had no problem getting her hands on thermite, and apparently no fear of using it.

“Monday morning,” Christine continued, “Sam fired Dover and promoted Getty …”

“Getty?”

“Matthew Getty. The assistant. He was just back from sick leave. Sam promoted him into Dover’s job, he sent me ten pounds of Godiva chocolate, and that should have been the end of it.”

“But the next Monday you got mugged,” Reese said. “How did you know that was related?”

“I didn’t at first. Until he asked for the necklace.”

“What’s special about the necklace?”

“Nothing. It was pretty much like the one I’m wearing now.”

Reese looked at her closely. He could see the outline of a slender chain over her collarbone. It was tucked inside her blouse; he hadn’t noticed it before. “He knew you had it.”

“Yes.” She slipped the necklace over her head and handed it to him.

The pendant was gold, rectangular, studded with small rhinestones. He pulled it apart to reveal the flash drive. “What was on it?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?” Finch asked.

“No. I only ever carry one company at a time on it, and I hadn’t started on Rickel’s audit. I’d reformatted it over the weekend. It was clean. I carry a drive everywhere. Never know when I’ll run across something worth scrumping.”

“Scrumping?”

“It’s a British term I stole.  Means climbing the wall and stealing the best apples out of your neighbor’s orchard.”

“Ah. A practice you’re quite fond of, if I recall.”

She nodded. “I didn’t think it was Dover right away. It might have been any former client. But then I started seeing the car. Beat-up Chevy, dark green. Tuesday morning it was across the street. Wednesday afternoon it was out back.” She moved to the screen and waved her fingers. “Zelda, show them the car.” 

The screen to the right changed. It looked like surveillance footage of the street in front of the bar. There was a battered green Chevy, exactly as she’d described it. After thirty seconds it changed to another time stamp and a different street, but the same or an identical car.

“You’re tapped into outside surveillance cameras,” Finch said.

She bit her lower lip and nodded. 

“Do you have live feed?”

She nodded again. “Zelda,” she called again. “Left screen, live feed, all cameras.”

The screen lit up with sixteen different squares. Some were moving, real-time; others held the same image, then took a new picture at intervals.  Reese rook a minute to look them over. It didn’t look like anything usual was going on outside the apartment. “Very nice.”

“Yeah,” Christine said grimly. “Also illegal as hell.”

“We’re not generally concerned with technicalities,” Finch told her.

“He does this all the time,” Reese clarified.

She relaxed a notch, almost smiled. They turned back to the other screen. The photos of the car continued, exactly as she’d said, throughout the day Wednesday.

“You knew they were watching you,” Reese said. “What made you decided to invite them in?”

She hesitated again, considered. Then she tapped a little arrow at the side of the screen. “This.”

A new video came up, surveillance from her own back door.  A man in sun glasses, trying to force the lock. It was time-stamped near midnight on Tuesday. He wasn’t successful.

“Were you at home?” Finch asked.

“No.”

“And he would have known that,” Reese said, “since he was watching the apartment.”

She nodded. “And then yesterday, during the day. Also while I was out.” She ran the next clip. It was the same man, apparently. Same size, anyhow. The second time he’d brought a pry bar. It didn’t get him through the door, either.

Reese brought his phone out. “I’ll get our friend to run the plates for us.”

“Why?” Christine asked. Before he could answer, she gestured with her air-keyboard again. A driver’s license came up on the left screen, and a rap sheet came up next to it. “Joseph Moodey. All-around small-time punk.” 

Reese studied the documents. Moodey was five foot ten, one-fifty, just the right size for the man who’d tried to break in. He’d done time for armed robbery, been suspected but not charged in several burglaries, picked up for fencing stolen goods. And done a second short stint in jail for sale of salacious materials to minors. 

“He’s a pornography dealer,” Finch said.

“More likely he’s muscle for a dealer,” Reese said. “Got caught trying to peddle on the side.”

“Either way,” Christine said, “the magic word led me back to Dover and his files.”  She‘d grown pale and quiet again.

“Show me,” Finch said.

She bent her wrist and the red light keyboard appeared at her fingertips. Her fingers moved; the pictures of the green car vanished and were replaced by dense lines of computer code. “I kept copies of the video samples we’d taken from Dover’s files, just as backup. And once I got it broken down I could see it.”

Finch studied the code intently for a moment. “It’s a black web.”

She sighed heavily. “Yeah. This whole big hidden site, running under Dover’s animal porn. It’s no wonder it was such a memory hog. And why the bleed over caused so many problems.”

“They couldn’t have thought the whole thing would be on your flash drive,” Reese said.

“They were looking for an address. I could have put it in a cloud, or off-site somewhere. That’s what I _should_ have done.”

“Is this a government site?” The Agency, John knew, loved to conceal its internet operations under civilian covers, and hiding in some sucker’s animal pornography sounded just like something Mark Snow would do.

But Finch shook his head. “No. It’s another porn site, as far as I can tell. A commercial site.”

“And if it’s worth all this effort to recover,” Christine said grimly, “it’s something really perverse.”

“So we’re looking at kiddie porn after all.”

“Almost certainly,” Finch answered. “You have the other samples?”

She brought them up in four more small squares. “You see the stupid now, right?” she asked sadly.

“I see it,” he said. “But I still would have done the same thing.”

“I _had_ them,” Christine said. “I had their whole damn operation right there in front of me. And I burned the original and scrambled the backup.” She shook her head again. “The worst of it is, it took hours. I held that box on my lap all the way to Staten Island. And even before that, waiting for Sam – I had literally hours to think about what I was doing, and it never once even crossed my mind to look closer. I saw those damn goats and my whole brain just shut off.”

“I’ve made worse mistakes,” Finch said. “Next time you’ll know better.”

She folded her arms over her chest again. She was miserable. “I could have shut down a child pornography ring and I blew it. I can’t believe I was so damn stupid.”

“Why did you decide to call Finch?” Reese asked.

Christine looked at him. “Because some guy followed me to Wall Street and tried to tap my phone, and he had way better tech than these idiots had shown before. And then I found out the same guy had been to my apartment.” Then she looked back at the screen. “But mostly … while I was out I had Zelda sift the data again, and she came up with the picture of the boy.” She touched the screen and the haunting photo came up. “Once I knew exactly how bad it was and how badly I’d screwed up, I just … reacted. Because apparently that’s what I do now. I don’t think, I just react.”

“It was a good reaction,” Finch assured her. “We’ll find him.”

“The odds of finding this child …” Her voice cracked; she dropped her head. “I _had_ them. I had _everything_.”

“We’ll get it back,” Finch promised. He was still studying the data lines, and from his posture, he had options in mind.

“So you replicated the external drive and let them steal it,” Reese said. “What’s the rest of the plan? Why the laptop?” He touched the screen, pushed windows aside until he found the street map again. The signal still hadn’t moved.

“It’s just back up,” Christine said. “Without a power source the hard drive is mute. I figured they’d pick up the laptop if I left it sitting there, so I’d have some idea where they were headed. And if they catch a virus or two from it, that’s just gravy.”

“What did you load on the hard drive?” Finch asked.

“Every Disney movie ever made,” she answered. “Heavily encrypted. And a tracker, of course.”

“How’s the signal hidden?”

“It embeds and piggy-backs on their WiFi.”

“Oh, very nice,” Finch said. “Not only do you know where they are, but you don’t even have to hack into their system. They’ll log in for you.”

“That’s the plan. The encryption should give me three, four hours before they know they don’t have what they wanted. That should be plenty of time. If they ever plug the damn thing in.”

“It’s in transit,” Reese told her. “This guy, Moodey? He’s just the thief. He took what he was told to take. He doesn’t know what to do with it, he’s just waiting to pass it off. Be patient.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you expect to find, once it’s connected?”

“Best case, a mirror of the files I destroyed. Clients and operators, names, addresses, buying history, credit card numbers. I copy it all off and give it to the police, FBI if it’s interstate. Worst case, three guys with an e-mail address and a server in somebody’s basement, and all I can do is burn them down and wait for them to rebuild.  Most likely, something in the middle – and then I figure it out from there.”

Reese and Finch shared a look. “I like it,” John said. “I like it a lot.”

“It should work,” Finch agreed. “We need to see what Dover’s connections are. Whether he was profiting from this business endeavor or simply allowing it to operate from his desktop.” Finch sat down at the keyboards and tapped the keyboard.

Nothing happened.

He looked at Christine. “I need access to your system.”

She froze. Reese could tell that until that moment she hadn’t considered that Finch would want to take over her computer. It was equivalent to the difference between Finch letting him stroll around the library and Finch giving him his passwords. But finally she took a deep breath. “Of course you do. Zelda, this is Mr. Finch.” Her voice shook. ”Say hello, Mr. Finch.”

“Hello,” he said tentatively.

Christine shook her head. “She knows there’s more than one of us here. If you don’t say her name, she assumes you’re not talking to her.”

With great and obvious exasperation, Finch said, “Hello, Zelda.”

“Hello, Mr. Finch,” the computer answered.

“Zelda, give Mr. Finch access to your data for the next two hours.”

“I may need more than that,” Finch protested.

“Zelda, prompt at fifteen minutes prior to access expiration.”

“Prompt scheduled. What data?”

“Everything,” Finch said.

Christine shook her head, and Zelda said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Finch. I don’t have a protocol named ‘everything’.”

“Of course you don’t, Z,” the woman answered. “Display all.”

Both screens lit up with tiny blue letters, file names, system names – too small for Reese to read.

“Mark all,” Christine prompted. The tiny letters turned red. “Now save as protocol name: Everything.”

There was an audible whirring sound. After about ten seconds, the computer said, “That is a significant amount of data, Christine. I will need a hard-keyed authorization.”

“Good girl, Zelda.” Her fingers flew over the light-up keyboard. Reese lost count after the first twenty components. She hesitated just for an instant before she hit the final enter key.

“Access assignment accepted,” the computer responded. “Welcome, Mr. Finch.”

“Thank you … Zelda.”

Reese smiled to himself. He’d never seen Finch completely nonplussed by technology. It was all very flashy, very impressive. Totally unlike anything Finch would have put together.

But it cost the girl; she was pale, visibly shaky again. Her pupils were huge. Reese moved a little closer to her; he gave her a fifty-fifty chance of trying to hit the floor. Provoking a second fight from her wasn’t an option. “Christine …”

Finch looked at her, and then looked stricken. “I’m sorry.” He glanced at the gleaming computer system behind him. “If there was another way …”

Christine shook her head. “I need a smoke.” She quickly palmed something out of the nearest drawer, then opened the window and climbed out.

 ***

 


	8. Chapter 8

** August 2001 **

Bellows and his team weren’t happy about putting Daisy in the back of the car alone with him, but Harold was certain the girl was no threat. She was exhausted; her body had no energy reserves, and without her drugs she was simply drained. She huddled in the far corner, with her back to the door and her knees to her chest again.

He’d known she was an abused child the first time he saw her. Making herself as small as possible seemed to be an instinct now.

She smelled awful. He wondered if there was any way to get that smell out of the leather seats. Too late to worry about that.

“Please,” she said, very quietly. “Please just let me go.”

“No,” Harold answered, just as softly.

“Why?”

“Because you hacked my system.”

“I won’t do it again. I promise.” She took a deep breath, as if she were trying to draw energy from the air. “If you want to turn me over to the cops, I don’t care. Just don’t make me go to rehab. I can’t.”

“They’ll take very good care of you. I promise.”

She thought about it for a moment, tried again. “If I could just fix before we get there, I could get through. It’s not even a whole hit. Just enough to take the edge off. Please.”

“No.”

“I need it.”

“No.”

She ran her hand over her face. “Look, I’ll do whatever you want. Anything. Just let me have my bag, just look away for a minute, and then anything you want.”

Harold glanced at her. He knew exactly what she was offering. As if any sexual favor from a woman in her condition held the slightest enticement. The idea made him nauseous

She read his answer in his expression and buried her face against her knees again. “Please,” she begged. “Please.”

“No.”

“Why do you hate me so much?”

He looked at her, surprised. “I don’t hate you. I’m perplexed by you. You clearly have an amazing mind. You could do anything you wanted to do. And instead you’ve decided to waste your life with drugs.”

“That’s my choice,” she said, with all the full-throated conviction only a teenage could muster.

“Of course it is. But instead of actually _making_ a choice, you’re simply following in your father’s footsteps.”

“You leave him out of this. You don’t know him.”

He wondered if she knew she’d used the present tense; her father had been dead for three years. He’d tracked her history while he waited for his people to pick her up; he knew much of what had happened to her since her summer as an IFT intern. “I know how he died, Miss Buchanan. And I can see you dying very much the same way, very soon.”

“So what?”

“The world is full of stupid people. People who make terrible decisions because they simply don’t know any better, or because they can’t foresee the consequences of their actions. But you’re not one of them. You’re a very smart person doing very stupid things.”

“Whatever.”

Harold gestured out the car window. “There are people out there right now who would give anything, who would sell their souls for the kind of intelligence you have. And you’re throwing it away.”

“Like I said, my choice.”

“Have you taken even one minute to think about what you’re doing? Or are you just blindly mimicking your parents, running headlong into self-destruction?” She didn’t answer, so he continued. “Were they good parents, Miss Buchanan? Were they the kind of people you’d deliberately choose to pattern your life after? Did they ever put their child’s need ahead of their own? Or were they selfish and uncaring and neglectful? And stupid?” She coiled even tighter, put one arm over her head as if he’d struck her. “And if you were honest about what they were for even that one minute, why would you choose to be like them?”

She made a small sound of protest, somewhere between a hiccup and a sob.

“You have something they didn’t have. You have a good mind, a first-rate intellect. And if you’d stop abusing it, that mind could take you anywhere. You can be anything you want. You can _have_ anything you want, _go_ anywhere … your life could be anything you want it to be. Nothing is beyond your reach. Absolutely nothing.”

“Stop it,” she sobbed into her knees.

“You don’t have to die in the gutter just because your parents did. You already have everything you need to get out.”

She went absolutely still except for the occasional involuntary hiccup-sob. Harold wondered she’d heard a word he’d said. He wondered why he’d even bothered.

Because there had been one moment in the pizza shop when her eyes had showed him how very special she might have been -- but it was probably already too late.

And then she said, very softly, “It hurts.”

It was the simplest, most honest thing she’d said all evening. She wasn’t talking about her heroin withdrawal, Harold knew, though that was swiftly becoming painful, too. She was talking about her whole life. The abuse, the neglect. The schools that could not challenge her agile mind. The loneliness. The boredom. The fear. The alienation from a world that had no place for someone like her. Her parents’ deaths, her addiction, her utter denial of her own potential. He knew very well what she meant. Too well. Remembering hurt, too. It would always hurt.

The girl twisted around until she slipped to the floor of the car, then folded her arms on the seat and put her head on them. He could see tears shining on her cheeks, but she wept silently. “It hurts,” she said again, broken. She closed her eyes.

“I know,” he answered, just as softly. He put his hand out slowly, hesitated, then let it rest on her head. Her hair felt like straw. Beneath, her skin was fever-hot. He touched her very lightly; she seemed too fragile to bear even the full weight of his hand. But she sighed softly, as if the contact gave her some small measure of comfort.

 _I left my capacity for hope on the little roads that led to Zelda’s sanitarium_. F. Scott Fitzgerald had written those words decades before. We’re not there yet, Harold thought. I have a little hope for her. But it was dim and fading. She was very wounded and very lost. 

Perhaps five minutes passed before she opened her eyes again. Her bright green contacts were weirdly luminescent under the street lights. Harold thought she was looking at him, but when he tilted his head a little he could see that she was gazing past him, out the side window of the car, watching as they passed the tall buildings at the heart of Manhattan. She said, quietly and perhaps not to him, “Sometimes I think a big hand will appear in the sky and knock all the buildings down on top of me.”

Harold felt a shiver of premonition run up his spine. But it was nothing, he told himself. Nothing. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”

She was silent for the rest of the drive.

 

When they stopped at the front entrance of the rehab facility, there were two large men in white waiting for her.  The girl climbed out of the car without protest. She was pale, weak – defeated. Harold felt like a beast. But every alternative he could think of ended badly for her. No mercy he offered her now would be any true mercy all. It would only hasten her death.

 

He walked around the back of the car, set her bag on the trunk and opened it. “I’m keeping the laptop. If you finish rehab you can come and get it.”

She stared at him dully. She was dwarfed between the two orderlies, and yet somehow managed to act like they were invisible. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Perhaps.”

“Can you get someone to take my library books back?”

Harold was completely unprepared for the tears that suddenly appeared in his eyes. He blinked quickly, grateful for his glasses. That was it, the source of that last ounce of hope he held out for her. That she still checked books out of the library instead of stealing them. That she still cared about something, however small. “I’ll take care of it,” he promised. He retrieved the books, gave the rest of the bag to the nearest orderly. “What she’s been using, there’s a little left in there.”

Daisy Buchanan gazed at him for one more long moment. She was calm now. Nothing left to fight for, no hope of winning. And yet he felt like she hadn’t given up, either. Otherwise she wouldn’t have cared about library fines.

She turned without a word and let the beefy men in white follow her into the building.

 ***

Two weeks later, late on a Sunday night, the director of the facility called Harold. He was apologetic about the late hour, and more apologetic to have to report that Miss Buchanan had disabled her supposedly  tamper-proof tracker anklet, climbed a 15-foot fence, and walked away.

Harold assured the man that he’d expected something of the sort. In truth, he was surprised that she’d stayed even that long. He spent the night reinforcing every firewall and security aspect of the company’s vast networks.

On Monday DaisyB did not attempt to hack IFT.

On Tuesday morning, the giant hand she had predicted took the form of two commercial airliners and knocked down the World Trade Center buildings.

Though he had no reason to think that the young woman had been anywhere near Ground Zero, Harold was irrationally certain that he would never hear from Daisy Buchanan again.

 ***

** 2012 **

Reese moved to the window and watched her. Christine flopped down on the top step of the fire escape, with her back half to the window. She shook out a cigarette, lit it with a silver Zippo, took a long drag and then coughed harshly. He was relieved there weren’t any needles or vials; he would have had to stop her. Cigarettes – and from the smell of the smoke, regular tobacco cigarettes – could kill her eventually, but not right in front of him.

She cleared her lungs and tried again. The second time she didn’t cough. 

“John,” Finch said softly.

Reese looked over his shoulder. Finch was frozen at his keyboard, looking toward the window with great concern. “She’s not going anywhere, Harold. She hasn’t got any shoes on.”

“I should have realized, I _did_ realize, I just …” It would have killed Finch, John knew, to have surrendered control of his entire system the way he’d just asked Christine to do.

But the girl was not Finch. “She’s alright. Give her a minute.”

Christine held the lit end of the cigarette inward, concealed in the curve of her palm. It was the way soldiers smoked, to keep the glow from giving their position away in the dark. She’d learned to smoke from her father.

“Why does she get to you, Finch?” Harold looked at him mutely. “She makes you react before you think. You don’t have to tell me why, but you’d better figure it out for yourself.”

“I don’t have to figure it out,” Finch said bitterly. “I know why.” He paused. “I gave up on her.”

Reese waited.

“When they admitted her to rehab, she weighted seventy-one pounds. She was days, maybe a week, from dying. And when they told me she’d broken out, the first thing I did was reinforce my firewalls. I knew she was on the street, I knew she couldn’t survive there, and my first thought was to protect my _computers_.”

“Finch …”

“That wasn’t atypical behavior for me at the time. Even after the Towers came down I didn’t look for her, not for weeks. As long as she wasn’t a threat, she wasn’t … relevant.” He shrugged. “That was the kind of man I was. The kind that could give up on someone like her.”

“That’s not the kind of man you are _now_ , though.”

“Isn’t it? She offered me hospitality and genuine gratitude, and I used them to emotionally blackmail her into letting us up here. I just bullied her into giving me full access to her systems.”

Reese shook his head. “She let you talk to Zelda because she wants to save the boy and she knows you’re her best chance. The girl’s not as fragile as you think she is, Finch. You want to feel bad because you didn’t try to save her a second time, go ahead. But look out the window first. She’s still here. The truth is, she didn’t _need_ you to save her twice. Not until now, anyhow.”  

Finch thought about it, nodded, not happily. “Do you believe her?”

“I think she’s telling us all she knows. I’m not sure it’s the whole story. This black web. Is it really worth killing someone over?”

“Absolutely. There’s pornography everywhere, free or cheap. To support a pay site, they’ve got to be supplying something very rare. And presumably very illegal. The files they think she has are valuable, but they’re replaceable. I’d guess that the real issue is avoiding prosecution. They want to be very sure that the data never reaches the police.” Finch stood up, touched the screen and brought up the picture of the boy again. “She’s right, you know. Our odds of finding this boy …” He shook his head.

“I know. But we can shut them down. Stop them from hurting any other children. And we will.”

“Yes.”

Reese glanced out the window again. “She doesn’t believe her life is in danger. It may be best to let her keep believing that.”

“For now, anyhow,” Finch agreed.

“Keep her inside, keep the doors locked. You’ll be safe enough.”

“Where are you going?”

“I think I’ll start with Larry Dover. Got an address for me?”

“Of course.” Finch sat back down at the keyboard. Then he paused, looked up, and spoke instead. “Zelda. Display an address for Larry Dover, please.”

“Of course, Mr. Finch,” the computer replied. The address came up on the screen.

“Aww, Finch, you’re evolving,” Reese teased gently.  He glanced out the window. The girl was tapping out a second cigarette. He climbed out the window and sat down beside her.

Christine glanced over at him. “Want one?” She offered him the pack.

Reese took the pack, turned it in his hand. Camels, no filter. He squeezed it gently. Nothing solid concealed inside.

She knew exactly what he’d been checking for. “Told you. Not using, not holding.”

The cellophane outer wrapper was yellowed and crumbly. “They’re old.”

 “They’re awful.” She took another long drag of smoke and held it.

“They sell these in stores now, you know. You could buy new ones.”

She shook her head, blew out the smoke in a cloud. “If they tasted good I’d go back to smoking two packs a day.” She lit the second cigarette from the butt of the first one, then crushed out the first but kept it in her hand.

“We will get these guys, Christine. We will track this network and we will shut them down. Whatever it takes.”

The woman studied him for a moment. Believed him. “Thank you.” And then, “Why?”

“Because someone needs to do it.”

That hadn’t been the ‘why’ she was asking, he knew, but after a moment she simply shook her head. “I could have made it so much easier.”

“You screwed up,” Reese agreed. “But you’ll be more help if you stop beating yourself up and get your head back in the game.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I know.” He looked down the alley below them, wondered if she could see the spot where her father had died from here. “Why do you live here?”

Christine sighed. “You know, on any other day the amount that you two know about me would totally freak me out.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” She took another deep drag, then crushed out the second cigarette, though it was only half gone. “There are tunnels from the basement to an old speak-easy. They’re a great place to hide the meth lab.”

Reese stared at her, and after a moment she relented. “Because it’s safe here.”

“The doors and the windows. And the big guy downstairs.”

“No. Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant. It’s emotionally safe.” She began to field-strip the butts:  peeled back the papers, shook loose the unburned tobacco, rolled the wrappers into a tiny balls before she tossed them away. She never looked at them while she worked; he was quite sure she was unaware of what she was doing. “Nothing worse is ever going to happen to me here.”

“That’s an interesting way of looking at it.” John considered for a moment. There was a certain logic in it. He thought for an instant about buying Jessica’s empty house in New Rochelle. About trying to live there, in her rooms, in her place, knowing that no greater grief could ever visit him there.

His mind recoiled so sharply that he felt nauseous. 

Christine said, gently, “Are you okay?”

Reese took a deep breath, got his own emotions firmly under control. “It can’t be good for you. Not in the long term.”

“We are not,” she said firmly, “going to discuss my housing choices right now.”

“Maybe later then.” He put his feet out, prepared to stand up. “Come on, back to work. I’ve got places to go.”

“To quote Chess, so I am not dangerous then? What a shame.”

“Hmmm?” he answered, with as much innocence as he could muster, which wasn’t much.

“That’s what this conversation’s been about, isn’t it? And why you came into the café in the first place?”

Reese sat back. He shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d fallen into the same trap as the men on Wall Street: She was pretty and sweet and straight-forward, and he’d been lulled into dismissing her intelligence. “Well … yes.” In a way, he liked being caught out by her.

“I’m not a threat to Random. He’s the last person on Earth that I’d hurt.”

“Random?”

“Finch.”

“I believe you.” He looked toward the street again. “That doesn’t mean you’re not dangerous. I’m starting to think you’re dangerous in a way I’ve never seen before. But not physically, not to him. And beyond that, he’s on his own.” He thought about it. “I think you’re probably more dangerous to yourself. You need to learn to let go of your past.”

“Mmmm.” She took out her lighter again, toyed with it. “How long you been out of the Army?”

“Long time.”

“And your hair just never got any longer, huh?”

He saw what she was getting at, of course. Ruefully, he ran his hand through his just-barely-longer-than-regulation hair. “I grew it out once. Grew a beard, too. It was itchy.”

“Uh-huh.” But she smiled, just a little.

“You might have a point. And if I’d smoked, I’d probably still be field-stripping my butts, too.”

“I didn’t … “She looked at her hands, startled. “I didn’t even know I did that.”

Reese rolled to his feet, put his hand out to help her up. “Let’s go. You don’t want to leave Finch alone with Zelda any longer than this anyhow.” 

 ***

Larry Dover lived in a tiny house on a quiet street. The yard was a little overgrown, the paint faded, the windows dirty. Reese walked to the garage and peered through the tiny window. There was a black sedan parked inside. He moved to the back door and listened. Only silence inside. He forced the door open and stepped inside.

The smell hit him like a fist.

John stopped and pushed the door all the way open to let a little fresh air move through. There was nothing quite like the smell of a rotting human body. It was unmistakable, distinct even from any other large dead animal. The odor started very soon after death and grew stronger every hour. This body had been dead a long time.

He covered his nose and mouth with his handkerchief and went inside.

The kitchen was messy and cluttered. There were dirty dishes on the counter and the table, and stacked in the sink. The trash can was overflowing. All of the cupboard doors were partially open; there were two sets of drawers, and the bottom drawer on each was open.

The top drawer nearest the phone, the one with the papers and pens and rubber bands, was sitting on the counter top. All the contents were pushed to one side.

Reese moved through the doorway. The man’s body was sprawled on his back in the archway between the living room and the dining room. He’d been wearing sweat pants and a white t-shirt when he died; the body was so bloated that the shirt was stretched tight and part of his belly was exposed. He had one arm at his side, the other extended out. John couldn’t see any evidence of violence to the body. There was no blood pool under him; he considered turning the corpse over to check for wounds and decided against it. 

The dining room table was as cluttered as everything else. One of the chairs was pulled out, set with its back to the table. He bent to look at the arms. There were clear, fresh marks at both ends, straight horizontal lines. Someone had been bound to the chair, probably with zip ties, and had tried to get loose. John looked more closely at the dead man’s outstretched arm. His wrist was too swollen to tell if there were any ligature marks.

He looked around the room. There was the standard furniture, but it was buried under piles of papers. There were file folders, magazines, catalogues, old newspapers. Most of it, Reese thought, looked like junk. All of it looked like it had been gone through. The doors of the side cupboard were open, and so was the drawer of the coffee table.

He kept going to the bedroom. The bed wasn’t made; there were dirty clothes on the floor. The closet was open and all the hanging clothes had been shoved to one side. The dresser drawers had been dumped.

Across the hall was another small room. It contained a big easy chair and a super-sized flatscreen TV, in an entertainment center that covered an entire wall. It also had a desk with a laptop on it, and a separate flatscreen monitor. Unlike the rest of the house, this room was largely uncluttered. Reese shook his head. You could tell what people cared about by what they took care of.

The doors of the entertainment center were all open. Within were dozens of DVD cases. They all seemed to have hand-made labels. Across the top shelf was a row of plastic VHS cases. Reese looked down at the TV. It had a DVD slot, but no VHS. It was possible, of course, that Dover had never gotten around to getting rid of his old media. He wasn’t much of a housekeeper. Beside the unit was a trash can; John could see dozens of plain white envelopes, all torn open by hand. He looked closer at the plastic cases. There were tracks in the dust in front of them. Gingerly, he used the handkerchief to take down the case with the lightest coating of dust and opened it.

It was full of hundred dollar bills.

Reese touched his phone. “Finch?”

“I’m here.”

“Are we alone?”

“Mostly.”

“Dover’s dead. He was tied to a chair, but he may have died of natural causes. He’s been dead a while. Several days to a week.”

“I see.” Finch’s tone was completely neutral; Reese knew the girl was right beside him. But he was also calm, so apparently there’d been no new drama at Chaos. He hadn’t expected any.

“The place has been tossed, but not by professionals. Probably they were looking for a web address.”

“Almost certainly.”

“And I found Dover’s retirement fund. He was getting paid in cash, I would guess for letting them run the black web.”

“I see.”

“I don’t suppose the box has shown up.”

Finch sighed. “No.”

“Send me the laptop’s location, then. I’ll see if they’re still together.”

“Sending it now. Should I notify our friends about the situation?”

“About Dover? There’s no rush. He’s not going anywhere.” Reese checked the message on his screen. “How’s our girl?”

“Quiet,” Finch answered. “But very observant.”

“Good luck with that, Finch.”

“Thank you.”

Reese tucked his phone away and gladly left the house.

 ***

“Was that Reese?”

“Yes.” Finch continued to study the code they’d separated out of the second sample file. He hadn’t liked the big touch-screens when he first saw them, but he had to admit that being able to stand up and move data around with his fingertips was helpful in this instance.

“What’d he say?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh.” Christine leaned her hip on the stool she’d dragged over from the breakfast bar. “That’s how we’re going to be, huh?”

“If it’s something you need to know, I promise I’ll tell you.” She didn’t answer. “It’s strange,” Finch said, without looking at her. “I can almost hear the gears turning in your head.”

“Can you?”

“You’re trying to calculate the best approach to persuade me.”

“Nope.” She folded her hands in front of her in a distinctly child-like manner. “Obviously you think that I’m too emotionally fragile to hear it. And as I’ve submitted myself to your clearly superior judgment for the day, I will abide that decision. I’ll just … sit here quietly … and continue to wallow in self-doubt.”

He did look at her then. A trace of mischief pulled at the corners of her mouth and danced undeniably in her eyes. “That was good,” Finch conceded. “An excellent attempt.”

“Best I could do on short notice.” She shrugged, gave up for the moment. “What are you seeing?”

He shook his head. “Nothing that you didn’t see. I wonder, though … you said you had Zelda sifting for content?”

“Yeah. But since the top layer is video, she’s not able to pull many useful images. From her point of view it’s all images.”

“Then we need to refine her point of view.” He sat down in front of the keyboard. “Show me the program you’re using.” 

Christine leaned over his shoulder and brought up a program. He scanned through the lines of code, understood immediately how it worked. “Did you write this?”

“Yes.”

“It’s good. May I?”

“Of course.”

He moved the cursor up near the top of the program and began to insert his own lines of code. “This should allow her to tag where each image is found. In essence to separate by layers.” He was intensely aware that Christine continued to hover over his shoulder, that she was watching every keystroke. And worse, understanding it. The part of him that demanded secrecy shuddered at her proximity. But there was another side, too, that reveled in it. She would understand how good it was.

It had its appeal, and the appeal set off his internal alarms. He shifted just a little, raised one shoulder.

Christine inexplicably, perhaps instinctively, read the gesture and responded perfectly. She moved away, settled back on her stool, and watched the re-coding on the big screen rather than over his shoulder.

She was still watching, Finch thought. Nothing had changed. But having her physically away from him calmed his alarm. She was watching now because he chose to let her watch. That was easier.

What he couldn’t figure out was how she’d known exactly what to do.

And, too, why she’d done it. It was, after all, _her_ system he was working with.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate on the coding. A line here, a tweak there. Half a line. Coding was second nature to him, practically instinct, and meshing his new code into hers was effortless; her coding was clean, near-elegant in its simplicity. Six lines at the end. He looked over the revised program. Added one more line. Less than a minute elapsed in real time.

He glanced at the woman. “Nice,” she said warmly.

Stop trying to impress the girl, Finch told himself firmly. Stop being pleased when it works. “Zelda,” he said, “run the revised program.”

The thumbnail pictures on the screen began to flash as the computer processed them.

Christine stood up and walked toward the door. “Do you want some tea? I’ve only got the one-cup junk up here, but I can have Igor …”

“No!” Finch barked.

She froze with her hand on the door lever, turned to look at him.

“I don’t …”He worked to make his voice calmer. “We don’t want you to leave the apartment right now.”

She didn’t move, and for an instant Finch could see her tensing. Getting ready to run. The situation had shifted in the space of one sharp word. She remembered, of course, that once he’d held her against her will – how could she not remember? But this time he couldn’t stop her. A few steps was all she needed. She could get away.

“Please,” he said.

She took her hand away from the lever. Her body relaxed. She walked to the little kitchen. “Crap tea it is, then,” she said, as if nothing had happened.

Finch stood and walked to the breakfast bar. “Christine,” he said quietly. “I’m not keeping you captive here.”

“I know.” She kept her hands busy with the little brewer. She met his eyes briefly, then looked away. “I’m doing better, huh? With the impulse control? Trying to actually think before I act.”

“You are,” Finch agreed.

She pushed a mug of tea towards him, turned back to the cupboard for a sugar bowl and a spoon. Then she got another mug and brewed herself a cup of coffee. “I would do even better,” she said evenly, “if I had all the information that should factor into my thinking.”

Finch stirred his tea, took a sip. It was, as she’d promised, a miserable imitation of real tea. If she’d stomped her feet, if she’d raged and screamed and demanded to know what was going on, it would have been easy to resist her. But her calm and polite behavior was very persuasive. And, too, he knew she was like him: The more information she had, the better she’d be able to deal with whatever happened.  After a moment, he conceded. “Larry Dover is dead. He’s been dead for at least several days. It may have been natural causes. But his house was searched, possibly robbed.”

Christine thought about it for a moment. As he’d anticipated, she remained calm. “And … that didn’t rise to the level of things you thought I needed to know?”

“You’re safe here, at least for now.”

She put her mug on the counter. “Downstairs, you tried to tell me that my life was in danger.”

“Yes.”

“But that was before you knew Dover was dead. So how did you know?”

“That’s … complicated.”

“And Reese was watching me in the restaurant before the robbery here even happened.”

“Yes.”

She nodded. He could see that she was picking over the details in her mind, making the connections. “Random’s higher calling,” she finally said. “You said it was me _right now_. Which implies that it’s … other people, at other times.”

There was no point in lying to her now. “Yes.”

“You’re not Random,” Christine pronounced solemnly. “You’re the freaking Batman.”

It was such an unexpected response that Finch had to chuckle. “Not exactly.”

“Pretty damn close.”

“There may be similarities.”

She gazed across the room, past the computer screens and out the window. Finch waited. Gave her time to process. And prepared to head her off if she pursued the whole issue any further. If that was possible.

Finally she nodded, mostly to herself. “I don’t suppose I can go have another smoke, can I?”

“I would _really_ prefer that you didn’t.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Now what?”

Finch took a deep breath of his own. Anyone could ask questions. Knowing what questions _not_ to ask was a special talent, and thankfully one that she was blessed with. “Now we do what we do.”

“We dig in the data.”

“We dig in the data.”

 ***

The seminar ended with group discussion. Kevin Frey kept his mouth tightly closed. If he opened it, he knew he was going to scream in frustration. No, it wasn’t harassment to ask a co-worker on a date. Yes, it was harassment to tell her she’d be fired if she didn’t say yes. No, it wasn’t harassment to post pictures of you and a co-worker at a party. Yes, it was harassment if the co-worker was drunk and semi-dressed. It was all common sense, or should have been. Frey had no intention of socializing with anyone at the company, anyhow, so he just didn’t care.

All the chatter was keeping him from the box. From doing his real job.

He watched Campanella across the room. The man was intelligent, successful, wealthy. He was also, in Frey’s mind, one of the most naïve men he’d ever met. He was listening to every word the presenter said. Carefully considering the comments of his employees. Paying attention to the _culture_ of his company. Nurturing an atmosphere … Frey wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him. Stop being such an idiot, he wanted to scream. Not one of these people would be here if you didn’t pay them.

He glanced at his watch. It was after four; this thing had to wrap up soon. Campanella didn’t like to keep his people late. He wanted them to be home with their families. In a town where people routinely worked eighty hours a week, Campanella actively discouraged overtime. He stressed balance over ambition.

The weird thing was, people seemed to get just as much work done.

Frey shrugged. The man’s management philosophy didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was a sucker, and it had been easy for Dover to run his operation under his radar, until he got careless. And it was easy for Frey to run his under Dover’s. Until the damn girl showed up.

He had to get back to that box. Get Garuccio his files, get his boss his photos. It should be simple. He just needed to get out of this room.

Finally, finally the speaker wrapped up her program. Frey stood up and eased toward the door ahead of the crowd. He’d skip the elevator, he decided, and take the stairs to his office. It was only two floors. It would be faster …

“Matthew!” Campanella said heartily. His hand settled on his shoulder. “How are you settling in?”

“Fine,” Frey said. “Just fine. There are still a few issues to work out, but it’s going well.”

“Good. Good. We’re going out for cocktails. You should come with us.”

Frey tried to laugh. “I’d love to, Mr. Campanella, but I …”

“Sam.”

“Sam. I’d love to, but I really have to get a little work done. I’ve got a couple processes running that I need to …”

The man pulled him closer, a little away from the throng. “Matthew, I know you’re very dedicated, and you’re trying to make a good impression. But if you want to move up in the world – not just here, but everywhere – you’re going to have to get out of that office and socialize a little.”

“I know that, Mr. … Sam. But right now I’m a little over my head.”

“And the problems will still be there tomorrow. Tonight you need to come out and be with the other managers. Let them get used to seeing you in your new role. It’s important, Matthew.” He hesitated. “Maybe if I’d kept Larry a little closer, hadn’t let him be such a loner …” He shook his head. “This is important to me, Matthew. As important as the computers are.”

Frey took a deep breath. “Then of course I’ll come with you. Just give me a few minutes to shut some things down.”

“Good. Good.” Campanella patted his shoulder and finally released him. “Ten minutes, in the lobby. Don’t make me send Karen after you again. She’s not nearly as pleasant the second time she has to do something.”

“I’ll remember that,” Frey promised. He slipped out the door and hurried to the stairway.

Once behind the steel door, he put his forehead against the cool concrete wall. All I wanted, he thought, was a cushy office and a network to run our stuff through. What the hell did I do to deserve a _mentor_?

He ground his teeth and let a small scream of frustration slip between them. Then he sprinted up the stairs to his office.

 ***

 


	9. Chapter 9

Zelda turned up fifteen more images from the sifted samples. One of them was an extreme close-up of an arm or leg. Another was part of a foot. The rest were blurs, indecipherable. Christine muttered darkly under her breath, in Russian. Finch simply nodded. “Moving on, then. Let’s see what’s left of the backup.”

“There’s nothing left of the backup,” she told him. “When I destroy something, I make damn sure it stays destroyed.”

“Nonetheless.” He sat down at the keyboard. “I suppose you left a back door.”

“I always do.” She worked on her floating numbers and brought it up for him.

“Everywhere?”

Christine raised one eyebrow at him. “Everywhere. I don’t plan on going south again, but if I do, I’m taking every dime in Manhattan with me.”

“Except mine, of course.”

“Sure. We can go with that answer, if it makes you happy.”

The location came up on Finch’s screen and he tried to access it – and failed. “And possibly you’ll be leaving Mr. Campanella’s funds as well. It doesn’t work.”

“What?” She tried it herself. The opening was blocked; the back door had been repaired. “Well, damn. Getty’s got a little game.”

Finch nodded. “Game on, then.” He searched for another way to breach the company’s firewall.

“I have Sam’s password,” Christine said. “But I don’t imagine we want to go that way.”

“No.” She was watching again, watching him hack this time. It tweaked his habitual caution, nothing more. He was getting used to her. Which was, in itself, dangerous. _A pretty girl brings you a cup of tea_ , he heard Ingram say again in his mind.

He found a way into Sam Campanella’s company computers.

“Do you think he’s in danger, too?” Christine asked suddenly.

“Who?”

“Sam. They went after Dover, and then after me. When they find out they don’t have what they think they have, will they go after him?”

Finch considered. “They’re more likely to go after Dover’s replacement. If they think the files might still be at the company …” He shook his head. “That would have been the first place to look. Before they bothered with Dover or you.” He sat back abruptly. “How did they even find you?”

Christine frowned at him, not following.

“You had a phone call with Campanella, and an off-hours meeting. Did anyone see you at his office?”

She shook her head. “The security guy in the bobby. But I was with Sam, so he didn’t even make us sign in.”

“They’ve been into the surveillance records, then.” He reached for the keyboard again.

“Wait,” Christine said. “Narrower search. They knew about the flash drive around my neck. So they had to see the surveillance from his office.” She slapped her palm against the smart screen and the qwerty keyboard of light stuck there. Her fingers flew over it. “Here.”

It wasn’t hard for Finch to locate the breach. It had happened on Sunday night, just before midnight. The hacker had been inside the system for five hours. Searching. “They didn’t find it,” he said finally. “They found you, but not the data.”

“It was already gone,” Christine answered. “And what was left they didn’t even recognize.”

“Show me.”

She found the sequestered area of the backup for him. He opened the code and studied it. Tiny pieces, shrapnel of data. The girl was right; she had well and truly destroyed it all. “This might have been Dover,” he said.

“He hadn’t been fired yet.”

“If he tried to access his pornography collection remotely and found he couldn’t, he might have gone searching.”

Christine nodded. “But he would have had access. He wouldn’t have needed to hack in.”

“Unless he wanted to remain anonymous.” Finch shook his head. “But he wouldn’t have known he needed to, until he knew his data was gone.”

“Whoever the web belonged to would have known the minute it went off-line,” she pointed out. “Maybe they called him.”

“We can have a look at his phone records,” Finch agreed.

She watched for a moment while he hacked in. It was obviously something she already knew how to do, which didn’t surprise him. After a moment she moved to the other screen and brought up a live picture. He glanced over; it was the Chaos. The café was half full, fairly quiet.

“Why do you live here?” he asked quietly.

Christine shook her head. “I already went through this with Reese. We are _not_ discussing my living arrangements right now.”

“I’m sorry.” Finch found the right record and scrolled back through the days. “I thought you were still submitting to my obviously superior judgment.”

“You thought wrong,” she answered lightly.

All of the contacts he could find in Dover’s call history were within Venture East. There was nothing at all on the Sunday in question. “Why a cybercafé?” he asked.

“The bar was failing. Zubec needed a job.”

“So you started a business to give a man something to do?” Finch shook his head. He had been one of her father’s hostages, Reese said. Perhaps she still felt like she owed it to him.

“Well, partly.” She shut down the picture. “I don’t really do well with people. But I don’t do well without them, either. If I didn’t have Chaos, I would sit in this room and eat chocolate and stare at screens and talk to Zelda and never see real people at all. I’ve tried it. It’s not good for me.” She shook her head. “So I brought the geeks to me. Zubec runs the place, I almost never really _have_ to be there. I go down, I socialize, and then when I get tired out I come up here and lock the door.”

“You found a balance,” he said.

“It works for me. No matter what you and John think.”

“You could keep the café and live somewhere else.”

“Not discussing that now,” Christine repeated firmly.

Finch shrugged. “I am not finding anything on Dover’s phone.”

“Maybe he has more than one.”

“It’s possible.” He started a search.

“I will concede that your judgment on this topic may in fact be superior,” she said. “But I am in no place, emotionally or intellectually, to hear anything you say on that subject right now.”

“Understandable,” he agreed. “We’ll take it up another day.”

“Wonderful. I’ll look forward to it.”

“I’m not finding another phone.”

Christine growled. “Where the hell is my hard drive?”

Finch stood up and walked to the big screen. He brought up the remnants of the backup files she’d so completely destroyed. “Can you de-encrypt this?”

“Sure. But it’s still shredded.”

“I know. I’d just like to see it.”

She brought up her keyboard of light and set to work.

 ***

Reese studied the front of the adult book store. There were the usual neon advertisements – peep booths, private movie viewing, new and used DVD’s, accessories. And interestingly, a large hand-written sign in one window that encouraged patrons to ask about ‘custom videos’. The building’s windows were painted white from the inside, so the patrons couldn’t be seen from the street.

He glanced at his phone and moved closer to the front door. The signal from Fitzgerald’s stolen laptop grew fainter. Reese paused, then turned to his right. The laptop apparently wasn’t inside the store. Instead, it seemed to be in a garish silver Cadillac parked around the corner of the building. Reese looked through the windows, but didn’t see the computer inside. He tried the door. The car wasn’t locked. He wasn’t surprised; when they rose to a certain level of criminal prominence, punks started to think they were untouchable. The kind of man who put massively expensive rims on his Caddy didn’t think anyone would mess with it outside his own business.

Obviously, he’d never met a man like John Reese.

Reese reached inside and pushed the trunk button.

There was a canvas duffle bag in the trunk. The laptop was there, together with a handful of thumb drives and SD cards. There was no sign of the stand-alone hard drive.

Reese closed the trunk quietly and retreated to the shadows. He called Finch.

“Mr. Reese?” Finch asked. “You’re on speaker.”

“Good to know. I’m sending you a license plate number. It looked like Mary and Honey broke up. The laptop’s here, but the hard drive isn’t.”

“Hmmmm,” Christine said. “I got nothin’ on that one.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Finch agreed. There was a brief pause. “The car is registered to a William Garuccio. I’m sending you his picture. He looks to be a small business owner, a place called Adult Movies and Peeps Incorporated. Very original.”

“I’m there now,” Reese said. “Does he have a record?”

“I can ask one of our friends.”

“Call Fusco. He needs to feel useful.”

Christine said, “Lionel Fusco?”

“Do you know the detective?” Finch asked.

“Yeah. He’s, uh … you know he’s dirty, right?”

John nodded to himself. The tone in her voice told him what he needed to know: Their girl was surprised that Lionel’s name had come up, but she wasn’t upset by it. If they needed him later, she’d be okay with Fusco. “We know,” he assured her. “But he’s trying to make better choices these days.”

“Huh,” she answered. “Okay.” And then, “I really ought to apologize to him some time.”

“I’ll get you his number,” Finch said tersely. From _his_ tone, Reese could tell that he wasn’t pleased to be out of this particular loop. But in Reese’s opinion, it was good for the genius to be shown he didn’t know quite everything once in a while.

“No sign of the hard drive tracker?”

“Not a damn word,” Christine said.

“Let me know.” He clicked off his phone and settled back to watch the Cadillac.

 ***

Frey took a quick glance at his cell phone. There were three missed calls, all from an unknown number, at precise fifteen minute intervals. He knew who was trying to call him.

Naturally, she hadn’t left a message.

“Hey,” Someone jostled his elbow.

Frey looked up. Lopez from Accounting and Davis from Risk were both looking at him eagerly. “What?” 

“What happened to Dover?” Davis asked.

Frey looked around quickly. Campanella wasn’t around. He was probably taking a leak. “I don’t really know.”

“Oh, come on,” Lopez pressed. “You have to know.”

“I really can’t … “

“It’s porn, isn’t it?” Davis said.

“You know about that?” Frey blurted.

“Everybody knows about it,” Lopez answered. “Well, everybody but the boss.”

“And you.”

Frey shook his head. “I don’t know the details. And if I did I couldn’t tell you. But yeah.”

‘And, uh, where is it now?” Lopez asked.

“What?”

“The _porn_ ,” Davis said. “Damn, that must be some serious sh….” He stopped, because Campanella was walking toward them.

“I don’t know,” Frey said honestly, innocently. “I’ve been checking into that, but I don’t have any good results yet.”

The other nodded, just as innocently.

And then the boss was back.

 ***

Finch gazed at the tiny fragments of code. “How to you know Detective Fusco?”

“He killed my father,” Christine answered casually.

Finch looked at her.

“Not kidding,” she assured him. “He didn’t have any choice.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

Something tickled at the corner of Finch’s brain. Something about the pattern of the code fragments. He shook his head impatiently and brought up the complete list of her system files again. “And what do you need to apologize to him for?”

“Alphabetically or chronologically? I abused the hell out of him while I was using. I can’t even count how many times I made him get me out of lock-up.”

“That’s why you don’t have a juvenile record,” he realized.

“Yep.”

He scanned through the list of files. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. And then something entirely different occurred to him. His mouth went dry; his chest felt tight. He turned to look at her again. “If I had turned you over to the police that night …”

“I’d have been on the street before you even got home,” Christine confirmed. “I’d have burned IFT to the ground and been dead of an overdose before you could catch up to me.” She shrugged, just a little. “There’s nothing wrong with your instincts.”

Finch grabbed his mug and took a drink of tea. It was awful and cold, but least it was wet. “Christine …”

She moved closer, put her hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I’m right here,” she reminded him.

“Only by the grace of God, apparently.” And then, as frequently happened when he was distracted by something else, he realized what he was looking for on the computer. “What did you use to shred the data?” he asked.

“Old program called Vorpal Blade.”

Finch smiled to himself. The pieces clicked into place. “Where’d you get it?”

“I scrumped it a long time ago.”

“From where?”

“I don’t remember. I was probably high. I’ve had it forever.”

“Have you modified it much?”

“I’ve done some updates. But basically it was tight and right from the start.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“Because I like it when you like my programs.”

“Vorpal Blade is yours?” She stopped. “Of course it is. I stole it from IFT.”

“Yes, you did. I don’t know how you kept it, though, since I took the laptop back.”

“Backups,” she announced cheerfully. “It’s a beautiful program, Random. But how does that help us?”

“I have a great dislike for computing actions that are completely irrevocable.”

Christine stared at him. “Meaning there’s a … are you freaking kidding me?”

“A reversing program,” Finch confirmed warmly.

“Are you serious? You’re serious. You can un-shred … _seriously_?”

Finch chuckled. “Seriously. Well, assuming your modifications are compatible.” He located and pulled up the actual program. ”We’ll need to partition off your hard drive and bring the fragments back in.”

After a moment, he became aware of her silence. “Christine?”

He looked over his shoulder. She had settled back on the stool, and was holding on to the seat with both hands, as if she might fall off. She was simply, unabashedly, staring at him. “Christine?” he said again. “Are you alright?”

“I don’t … know,” she said. “It’s so strange.”

“What?”

“For a while there … I actually thought … I was keeping up. That I was … playing in the same league with you.”

He laughed, but gently. “You’re keeping up just fine. For a novice. Now make me a partition.” 

 ***

Garuccio came out to his Cadillac with a young woman. She was a peroxide blonde with improbable cleavage, flagrantly displayed in a tight, white, half-buttoned sweater. She wore a similarly tight white skirt, very short, and high heeled sandals. She seemed willing enough to get in the front seat with him.

Four men followed them out of the shop. Two wore muscle shirts and tight jeans. The other two were more conventionally dressed and carried equipment cases, two apiece. They got into a van parked up the block and followed the Cadillac.

Reese followed them both.

Ten blocks away both vehicles stopped in the end of an alley. The van parked sideways, blocking the Caddy in, and also blocking most of the view from the street. John parked up the block and walked back. Before he got there, his phone buzzed. “Lionel?” he said quietly.

“Hey,” Fusco said. “That green car from the burglary? We found it.”

“And the guy who was driving it?”

“Yeah, found him, too.” Fusco sighed. “He’s dead. But it’s got nothing to do with our girl.”

Reese peered down the alley. The men with the cases were putting together long poles with small spot-lights on one end.  The other two and the girl were walking around, chatting. Garuccio was talking on his cell. He had odd-looking eyes, round and set very close to his nose.

“How do you know that, Lionel?”

“Well, partly because I know you been sitting on her all afternoon. But mostly because twenty witnesses heard his girlfriend scream, and I quote, ‘I told you I’d kill you, you two-timing son of a whore’ right before she shot him in the chest. Six times.”

“That’s convincing,” Reese allowed. “Are you still at the scene?”

“Yeah.”

“Take a look around for a stand-alone hard drive.”

“A what now?”

“It looks like a small video game console.”

“Like a Wii?”

“Yes. But half that size, dark gray, with a couple ports and a light.” Reese moved into a dim space between the van and the wall of the building. The men stood up the lights and turned them on, illuminating the shadowy alley. He didn’t see any cords, so they had to be battery powered. They went back for the other cases and brought out two video cameras. One set up a tripod. “I don’t think he has it, but it might be in the car. Let me know if you find it.”

“I’ll take a look. You figure out what’s going on with her yet?”

“Mostly.” Reese hung up before the detective could ask any more questions.

Garuccio had finished his call, as well. Reese took the opportunity to bluejack his phone. “Alright, alright,” the man said. “Let’s get this done before it gets dark. Sweetheart, come on over here.” He draped his arm over the blonde’s shoulder. “Here’s how this goes. It’s kinda dark and you’re walkin’ down this alley all alone and it’s scary, right?”

“Why?” she asked.

“What? Why what?”

“Why would I walk down the alley alone if I’m scared?”

“It’s a shortcut,” Garuccio told her. “Why do I give a shit why you’re doing it? You’re doing it because I tell you you’re doing it.”

“Okay. But it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Whatever. You start down there, you walk down the alley. Nice and slow, okay? And then …”

“If I’m scared, why would I walk slow?”

The man tightened his arm around her shoulder. “Kitten, just do what I tell you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“When you get to right here,” he pointed toward a spot in the center of the lights, “these two guys come at you. Corner you. Got it? And at first you struggle a little, try to get away, whatever. But then they get their hands on you … you know what I mean, guys, hands on her? All over her? Yeah? And then, sweetheart, you start to think hey, maybe this could be fun, right?”

She nodded. “And then we do what we do.”

“Yeah. Well, get that far and we’ll see what’s next. Everybody got it?”

“Wait,” the taller of the guys in the muscle shirt said, “so what are we supposed to say to her?”

“What, you want dialog or somethin’?” Garuccio asked. “Just say whatever.”

“Yeah, but …”

“I thought you said you’d done this before.”

“I have, but …”

“You see a girl built like this in the alley and you decide you’re gonna do her on the spot. So what would you say to her?”

Even from a distance, John could see the would-be actor’s face go red. “I don’t know, I never …”

Garuccio geared up to yell at him, but the shorter guy stepped in. “You just keep your mouth shut. Be the silent scary one. I’ll do the talking.”

“Yeah, good, whatever.” Garuccio threw his hands up. “Can we just do this?”

It was sad, Reese thought, but also a little funny. He wondered if it was a crime to film a commercial video in the city without a permit. Probably. And the next part of the plot would obviously involve all sorts of misdemeanors, at a minimum.

But everyone was adult and consenting. He wasn’t planning to step in.

It took them eight tries to fulfill Garuccio’s artistic vision. By that time the porn king was ready to tear his hair out.

Fusco called back to say that he hadn’t found the hard drive. Reese wasn’t surprised. He settled on the back bumper of the van and called Finch.

“Where are you, Mr. Reese?”

“I’m watching the magic happen, Finch.”

“What?”

“You don’t want to know. How’s our girl?”

“Feeling profoundly outclassed,” Christine called to him. She sounded more cheerful that she had all day.

“We think we’ve found a way to reconstitute the data from the backup,” Finch said.

“I thought it was shredded.”

“It is. But Miss Fitzgerald’s habit of scrumping is proving advantageous.”

“Good,” Reese said. “I always preferred steak anyhow.”

 ***

Kevin Frey flopped into his massive leather chair. He was exhausted, and he’s had one too many drinks. At least. Two more than Campanella’s unwritten two-drinks policy. But finally he was free of Sam, of seminar leaders, of his damn fake co-workers. Finally, it was just him and his box of secrets.

He fiddled with the chair’s adjustments again. No matter what he did, it still felt like Dover’s chair.

He turned on his laptop, checked his phone while he waited for it to boot up. There were three more missed calls. No messages. Miller’s silence was unnerving. She was scary enough when she was barking at him. Once she went silent …

Frey listened intently. The building around him was quiet. Nothing but the hum of sleeping computers.  He doubted there was anyone else in the office. The cleaning crew came in at midnight.

 He should have gone home. Should have taken the stupid box home, instead of coming back here. At least at home he could hear traffic, neighbors. The silence here put him on edge.

You’re an idiot, he told himself firmly. And you’re a little drunk. That’s all. Everything’s fine. Just get this done, and then you can go home and actually sleep. Tomorrow everything will be back the way it should be.

He pushed Dover’s chair back from the enormous desk and went in search of coffee.

 ***

 


	10. Chapter 10

Zelda ran Finch’s newly-imported program. From the ocean of fragments, she re-assembled sixty-seven lines of code. Then she stopped.

“What’s up, Z?” Christine asked.

“I require additional input to continue,” Zelda answered.

Finch couldn’t be sure if the computer’s voice was actually aggrieved or if he was assigning that attribute in his own mind. He moved over to the large screen and studied the code. “Here,” he said. Christine’s floating keyboard of light was still stuck to the screen; he typed the patch in awkwardly. “Try that, Zelda.”

She ran another twenty-one lines and stopped.

Finch tried the same patch. It didn’t work.

He put in a different one. The program resumed.

“My modifications are incompatible,” Christine observed.

“A bit,” Finch agreed. “This will work. It will just require some hand-holding.”

“I am still absolutely amazed.”

He smiled. “You’d have been more amazed if it had run straight through.”

Zelda stopped, and he applied another patch. “This is going to take forever.” He picked a second spot for the sorting to commence and threw it to the other screen. “Patch that,” he said. “Let me know if you get stuck.”

She moved up to the second screen and waited for a stall. Finch watched while she fixed it, assured himself that she understood how the program worked. Then his own screen stalled and he turned back to it.

They were quiet for a time. It wasn’t difficult work, just a simple combination of waiting and repairing as needed. Sometimes the program ran for many lines of data; sometimes it stalled after two or three. The quantity of date was enormous, and Finch mentally calculated that it would take between three hours and all night to put it back together. But when they were done, they would have the entire black web. All the names and places, all the evidence. And perhaps even some way to find the wounded boy in the picture.

Finch glanced at the young woman. Her fingers flew over a keyboard that existed only as light, manipulating data in mid-air like some sysadmin mystic. She moved gently but constantly as she worked; when her feet weren’t in motion she was leaning or swaying. If he hadn’t been there, she would have had music playing; she could probably hear it in her head. Dancing with data.

It would be better for his back, he realized, to be standing up, untethered to a physical keyboard. But he could never learn to work that way. Too old to learn new tricks. That didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate her artistry. 

He could get a screen, though, and a rolling keyboard cart that would let him stand. That would be worthwhile.

She caught him watching her and paused. “What?”

“Nothing.”

It was, he realized, actually _pleasant_. Christine was right beside him, safe and content. He’d given up on her once, almost lost her. Should have lost her. Deserved to have lost her. But he’d gotten her back. And if he could reclaim Christine, perhaps he could also …

No, he told himself firmly. He could not even consider it. The risks were much too high. You got Christine back. Enjoy her company. Listen to Nathan’s voice inside you. Let her bring you a cup of tea and enjoy it. But the other … no.

Christine glanced at him curiously. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he answered, flustered. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to give away his state of mind. “Just my, uh, my neck, a bit. I should sit down.” He moved to the chair and the conventional keyboard.

“I have aspirin,” she offered. “Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, naproxen. Ice pack, heat pack. Acupuncture needles. I’m pretty good with them.”

Finch smiled grimly. “Perhaps more bad tea?”

“Sure.” She took his mug and went to the kitchen.

He watched the code run for a moment. Then he reviewed the outside camera views. Nothing that alarmed him. He checked downstairs at Chaos. It was getting loud. He could see the attraction for Christine. She was exactly right; she could run down and socialize as much or as little as she wished, then simply retreat to her very private secret lair.

He glanced at the windows, at the cheerful steel door. At the computer system that could be entirely concealed. She was so like him, in many ways. Not all of them were good. 

“Why do you turn your cell phone off?”

She brought his pseudo-tea back. “What?”

“The barista told Mr. Reese that you turn off your cell phone when you go out. He thinks it’s so the government can’t follow you.”

“Or anybody else. Which actually turned out to be a good idea. In theory, anyhow.”

“Oh, yes. You were delightfully elusive,” Finch said dryly. “And you’re evading the question. Why the coated windows? The steel doors?”

“Because I live in New York,” she answered simply, “and I have a ton of computer equipment.” She restarted her side of the program. “You know, this is … Zelda, write me a program. Keep a list of every patch that’s inserted, and when you come to a break try each of them. If none of them work, prompt for assistance.”

“Zelda,” Finch added, “prioritize your attempts by the number of times a patch has been previously successful.”

“Understood,” the computer said.

It didn’t help a lot, right away, but Finch sensed that it would as they applied more patches. “Good thinking.”

“Thanks.” Christine watched the screen for another minute. “What you’re really asking is why I’m so paranoid.”

“You are very security conscious,” Finch amended gently.

“And you’re not?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But I rarely meet anyone quite as obsessive as I am.”

“I was raised by an undiagnosed, untreated paranoid schizophrenic. I picked up some of his habits. A lot of his habits. Mr. Reese pointed out earlier that I even smoke like he did.”

“You really shouldn’t, you know.”

“What? Smoke?”

“Yes.”

“You’re just making yourself right at home in my life, aren’t you?” She shook her head. “I’ve been smoking that same pack for four months and it’s not empty yet.”

“Good. Then stopping entirely should be …” He stopped. She was right. “Never mind. You changed the subject again.”

  1. “Apparently I didn’t.” Christine paused to apply another patch. ”My father used enough hard-core drugs to burn out his short-term memory. So he would tell someone a secret one day, and the next day he’d be surprised that they knew, because he didn’t remember that he’d told them. It played into his paranoia. His certainty that he was being watched. And the more time passed, the worse they both became. They fed each other.”   



Finch nodded, patched in silence.

“Then he saw some TV show where a guy was convinced that government had put a chip in his head, and my dad decided that was the only explanation that made sense. That they’d chipped him and they followed him everywhere and listened to everything he said.”

“And,” Finch asked carefully, “do you think you have a chip in your head?”

“No. But I have a chip in my phone, and my computer, and my tablet, and in free WiFi spots all over the city. And they’re all so artificially cheap that almost everyone has one or more of them. The government doesn’t need to put a chip in my head. I carry it with me voluntarily.”

“And you think someone’s watching all of that.”

Christine didn’t bother to answer. She just gave him that look, the look she’d once given Nathan Ingram in an empty pizza shop. The look that asked, ‘are you an idiot, or do you just think I am?’

“I’m not disputing your assertion,” he said, as calmly as he could. “I’m interested in your thinking on the subject.”

“I think somebody’s watching it,” she answered. “Not somebody. Some _thing_. My guess is a national array of supercomputers, with a king-hell information exchange system. But I try not to think about it directly for too long. It’s a Medusa.”

“Medusa?”

“If I look straight at it, if I consider all the implications, I become terrified. Paralyzed. If I just let it sit in the back left corner of my mind, I’m okay.”

Finch stared at the computer screen without seeing it. She didn’t know, not precisely, but she was dangerously close to guessing. She could see the outlines, if not the details. The only piece she didn’t have was _him_ , and she was bright enough to put it together with just the slightest clue. Random and his higher calling. If you’re alive and you’re here, she’d said that first night. Oh, Christine, he thought frantically, please stop. Don’t guess, don’t look. Your life probably depends on it. And I’m not sure I can protect you.

He should never have come here.

And there was something else, too. If she put them together – the all-seeing system she had mostly guessed and Finch – she was going to hate him. She would see the Machine was a monster. She would see him as the monster’s creator.

 _A pretty girl brings you a cup of tea._ But she never would again, once she knew the truth. He had begun to genuinely enjoy her company. He was going to miss her.

Out of nowhere, very quietly, Christine said, “I kinda like it.”

Finch spun around to look at her. “What?”

She looked away, embarrassed. “I know I shouldn’t. I know I should be outraged and offended and … whatever. But I was _here_ when the Towers came down. I remember. All the people, all the … and how quiet it was, and how the air tasted, and how strange the light was … and how scared we all were, waiting for the next attack.” She snuck a quick glance at him, and whatever she read in his face she misinterpreted, because she looked away again, blushed. “I know. I _know_. I should be smarter than this, it shouldn’t be just emotional, not this far out, but … “

She moved to the furthest end of the screen, turned and put her shoulder against the bookcase. Finally met his eyes again. “There are days, even now, when it’s just the right temperature, when the sky’s just the right color, and the clouds … when I see an airplane overhead, low, and I just  …” She blinked back tears. “And I find a camera. There always is one, they’re everywhere. I find one, and I stare at it, and it’s … it‘s _watching_. And it’s okay then. _I’m_ okay then. It’s just an airplane, it’s just landing, and I’m safe because it’s watching, it’s taken care of it ….”

She stopped. Finch could tell by her expression that she was reconsidering what she’d just said. And that she’d never said it out loud before. “Maybe you should have me committed again.”

“Why?” Finch asked quietly. His voice cracked. He stood up slowly. “You’re not crazy.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I was here, too.” He walked over and stood beside her. She turned to gaze out the window with him. “I know about the sky. About how if you see three fire engines headed the same direction you want to run the other way.” She slipped her hand into his; her fingers were cold, and his were too cold to warm them, but he held them gently anyhow. “About how if a subway train makes an unexpected stop makes all the locals go silent and get that look in their eyes.” He nodded to himself. “About how everyone carries a cell phone in this city, just in case they might only have a few minutes to call someone they love one last time.”

Christine nodded with him. “Yes. That. Exactly.”

“But then why the windows and the doors and the firewalls?”

“Because … because I can’t live downstairs.” Finch looked at her. “Because I need to be alone sometimes. I need order and solitude. Not because I’m doing anything wrong, but just because I’m me. I need a little space.” She gestured to the apartment. “This much space. To be alone in.” She shrugged. “Medusa doesn’t seem to mind.”

“No,” Finch answered. “I’m sure she doesn’t.”

Christine glanced over his shoulder. Sighed. “We’re both stalled.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

For understanding, Finch thought. For not condemning me for what you must never know for certain. For letting me feel, for the first time since Nathan died, that I’m not entirely alone with the Machine. For understanding the _why_ of its creation.

Perhaps even for giving it a name.

“For putting it into words,” he finally answered. “I don’t think I ever could have.”

She tipped her head. The blue eyes, bright and piercing and looking through every façade again. She was on the edge of putting it all together.

He tugged at her hand lightly. “Back to work. Let’s see if we can find your boy.”

The brightness flickered away and the pain returned. It was exactly what he’d intended. It was cruel. But not as cruel as letting her decipher the truth would have been. She eased her hand away and went back to her screen.

 ***

The blonde’s name, Reese was able to figure out, was not Cupcake or Kitten or Stupid Cow, but most likely some version of Trisha. She liked to make Garuccio yell, and she was really good at it. John wondered if he was morally obligated to help if the porn master had a heart attack in front of him. It seemed like a real possibility. He decided he’d call 911 and call it a day.

Through the bickering, the little crew had managed to film most of the foreplay. But when Garuccio had his camera guys drag an old mattress out from behind the trash bin, Trisha balked. “I am _not_ doing it on that,” she said flatly.

“What, baby?” Garuccio cajoled. “It’s a mattress. You been on a million of ‘em, right?”

“Uh-uh. No way I’m laying down on that thing.”

“C’mon, it’s even in pretty good shape.”

“Yeah. And the only reason someone would throw out a mattress that good is ‘cause it has bed bugs. I am not going near that thing. We can do it standing up or something.”

“That’s not what the client wants, Sugar.”

“I don’t care what the client wants, _Sugar_. I’m not getting’ bitten up and taking those little bastards home with me. You get them in your apartment you can never get rid of them.”

Garuccio glared at her. “Fine. I’ll throw in an extra hundred.”

“Costs nine hundred bucks to get your apartment heat-treated for those suckers.”

“I am not giving you nine hundred bucks for a three-way.”

“Wait,” the taller muscle guy said, “if she’s getting extra money, I want some, too.”

“She’s not!” Garuccio snapped. “Nobody’s getting any extra money!” He pointed at the woman. “Just get your ass on that mattress right now.”

“No.”

The man put his hands on his hips and glared into the setting sun. It would, John guessed, be too dark to film in another half an hour. Garuccio shook his head and turned back to his cast. “You,” he said, pointing at the shorter man, “hold her down. And you,” to the taller one, “get to work.”

“I told you,” Trisha shouted, “I am not … “

“What part of hold her down don’t you understand?” Garuccio yelled over her.

The muscle shirt guys moved uneasily.

“Don’t you touch me!” Trisha yelled at them.

“You want to get paid, you do what you’re told.”

The two of them looked at each other. And then they moved toward the woman.

 Reese stepped into the open. “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?”

“Who the hell are you?” Garuccio barked at him. “Get outta here.”

“The lady said no,” Reese stated patiently.

“Yeah, well, the _lady_ works for me and she’ll do what she’s damn well told and it’s none of your damn business.”

“I ain’t doin’ it on that filthy mattress,” Trisha said.

“You’ll do what you’re told, you whore!” He gestured to his muscle men. “You two, get him out of here. Make sure he doesn’t come back.”

They weren’t very enthusiastic when they came toward him. Reese hoped they’d think better of it. But Garuccio yelled something about their mothers, and he could tell they felt like they had to make the attempt. He left them get close. Then he grabbed the tall one’s arm, got his hand behind his neck, and cracked his forehead into his smaller partner’s.

Trisha screamed. It wasn’t very convincing.

The two of them crumpled to the ground. They both moved a little, but neither of them attempted to get up.

Reese looked at the camera guys. They both backed away.

That only left Garuccio. But the porn dealer was too furious to be smart. He got his head down and ran at Reese as hard as he could. Reese pivoted at the last second, let the man’s charge carry him past his hip. Then he grabbed him by the collar and threw him into the side of the van.

Garuccio struggled to get up. Reese looked at the woman. “You want to get out of here?”

She gestured with her head. John half-turned and hit Garuccio squarely in the jaw. The man dropped to the pavement for a second time.

When he turned back around, Trisha was running at him. “Leave him alone, you big bully!” He caught her by her upper arms. She pummeled his chest with both fists – very lightly. “I need this job,” she whispered. “Make it look good.”

Reese spun her around and pinned her against his chest with one arm. With the other, he backfisted Garuccio as the man came up behind him. The third time the porn dealer hit the ground, John was pretty sure he’d stay down for a while.

The equipment guys had vanished. The actors in muscle shirts were still on the ground and making no moves to get up.

“Right,” Reese said. “You’re coming with me until we straighten this out.”

“Let me go!” the actress squealed. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

 “ ‘ead ma’,” Garuccio muttered.

John leaned closer, still holding the woman. “What was that?”

“Said you’re a dead man.”

“You’re absolutely right.” Reese kicked him in the ribs, just for good measure. He shifted, got the woman’s hands behind her and marched her out of the alley. She made a half-hearted attempt to escape, did a little trash talking for Garuccio’s benefit. But she dropped it as soon as they were out of the alley.

Reese released her hands. “You okay?”

Trisha rubbed her wrists. “Yeah, fine. You were pretty good back there.”

“Thanks.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why were you good back there? Why’d you get involved?”

John shrugged. “I was brought up that no means no.”

She laughed. “Wow. I’ve found the only Boy Scout in New York City.”

“Not a Boy Scout,” Reese protested quietly. “Can I buy you some dinner?”

Trisha cocked her head at him. “Yeah, no. I appreciate your help and all, but I don’t give away freebies. Even to Boy Scouts.”

“I wasn’t asking for one. Just dinner, and maybe some information about your boss.”

“Garuccio? He’s trash.”

“I know.”

“How come you aren’t asking for a freebie?” She arched her back at him. “These are real, you know. Home grown.”

Reese was absolutely sure they weren’t, but it seemed impolite to argue the point. “They’re … lovely,” he said. “But I’m just looking for some information.”

She looked at him closely. “You aren’t married. But there’s something else. She dumped you and you ain’t over it yet.”

“Something like that.”

“Okay.” Trisha nodded. “Dinner would be great.”

John opened the car door for her. Gazed at the setting sun for a moment himself. First thing tomorrow, he decided, he was asking Finch for a raise.

 ***

“Go ahead and open it,” Christine said quietly.

“What?”

She gestured to the screen in front of Finch. “You’re hovered over it three times. You’re dying to see it.”

Finch smiled nervously. His cursor hovered over the file a fourth time. “I’m afraid to. What in the world is ‘Bookcase Porn’?”

Christine grinned. “You’ll have to click it to know.”

Very gingerly, Finch clicked the button. The screen filled with thumbnails. Hundreds of single pictures. Pages of them. He leaned closed to the screen, still nervous. Everybody had porn, she said, and he believed it. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to see hers. In fact, he was sure he _didn’t_ want to see hers. He clicked on a picture.

The photo was of a long, curved, massive and absolutely gorgeous mahogany bookcase.

Finch glanced up at her, relieved. “Ahh.”

“What did you think it was?” she teased.

“I … uh … “

“Yeah. I know.” She laughed and went back to work.

Finch browsed through some of the other photos. They were all of bookcases, some tiny, some that filled entire rooms. Bookcases built into the sides of staircases. Around reading nooks. Around a bar. Around a pool. Some were whimsical, some utterly impractical. All of them were beautiful.

And at the very bottom of the list there was a single subfolder, named ‘Ingram’.

Finch glanced over his shoulder. Christine wasn’t paying attention. Nervous again, he clicked the file open.  There were four pictures in the file, all of the massive bookcase on the front wall of Nathan Ingram’s loft.

He sighed softly. “Where did you get these?”

“Hmmm?” She came and looked over his shoulder. “Sorry. I forgot that was in there. They’re from the real estate listing. Have you been there?”

Finch nodded. “It’s a very beautiful property. And very secure. It’s still for sale, you know.”

“Little rich for my blood. But I like to look at the pictures.”

“I’ll buy it for you, if you like.”

“What?”

Finch gestured toward the screen. “The loft. I’ll buy it for you, if you’ll live there.”

She stared at him. Finch could see her trying to decide if he was serious. He wasn’t entirely sure himself; he very rarely gave in to that sort of impulse. The last time he’d done it, he’d found himself with an infant to care for. But if she took him up on it …

“What?” she repeated.

“Nathan’s loft. If you’d move out of here and live there …”

“Do you know what they’re _asking_ for that place?”

“Yes.”

“No.” She believed him, finally. “I … thank you, but no.” She considered. “Let me be completely unequivocal about this. Absolutely not. You can _not_ buy me Nathan Ingram’s loft.”

“I think he’d enjoy it, knowing you were there after all this …”

“Random. _No_.”

Finch sighed, loudly this time. “Very well.” He closed the file. “Would you at least come see the bookcase in person?”

“Harold.”

“Oh, fine.”

After a moment, she said, “I’m almost afraid to ask, but exactly how much money do you _have_?”

Harold chuckled. “I have … what was that word? _Enough_.”

Christine shook her head. “It’s always the quiet ones,” she muttered as she moved back to her board. “Always the quiet ones.”

 ***

Trisha ordered an appetizer and two entrees – one to be brought to the table and one to be boxed up to go. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, after the waitress had already left.

“Not at all,” John assured her. He didn’t bother to tell her that he never even saw the credit card bills. He wouldn’t have begrudged her the food even if he’d been paying for it out of his own pocket.

“You want to know about Garuccio, huh? He’s a skunk.”

“I got that,” Reese answered. “Tell me about these custom videos.”

“That’s what we were doing tonight. It’s stupid, but it pays really well.”

“How’s it work?”

The waitress brought them a plate of fried mushrooms. Trisha picked one up, dropped it immediately. “Hot, hot.” Then she picked it up again and juggled it from hand to hand until it cooled. “These guys come to see Garuccio and tell him what they want. Their fantasies, you know? He gets half the money up front, they give him as many details as they want to. And he’s got a book of all his actors, head shots and body shots, they can pick out who they want in it. We act it out their story and he films it, edits it together, burns a DVD and the client gets his rocks off.” She shrugged, popped the mushroom into her mouth. “It’s not like, real art, you know. There’s no scripts or anything. Just the ideas usually. Sometimes some weird details. Last one I did the client wanted me to wear these certain panties. Lilac, with lace. He brought them in for me. Brand new in the package, cause I said they had to be. He let me keep ‘em, too. They’re nice.”

“Did he say why lilac?”

“Nope. And I didn’t ask.”

“Probably wise.” Reese snagged a mushroom for himself. “Is there ever anything in these scenarios that you won’t do?”

“Oh, sure. All the time. But Garuccio knows who’ll do what for him. It’s not a problem.”

“What about things that aren’t legal?”

Trisha laughed. “Honey, most of what we do isn’t legal.”

“I mean really illegal. Like … children.”

“You mean Lola.”

“Lola?” Reese asked carefully.

“Yeah. Man, that girl works all the time. ‘Cause she looks like she’s fifteen, tops. Like Britney in that first video, you know? In the schoolgirl skirt?”

“Is she really underage?”

“Oh hell no. She’s the same age as me. Twenty … three.”

Reese raised an eyebrow at her.

“Okay, twenty-six.” She brought her phone out, scrolled through her pictures. “Here. That’s Lola and me, last time we worked together.”

John studied the picture. The little dark-haired woman with Trisha really did look like a teenager. A very young one. “You sure she’s your age?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. We were in school together, kindergarten to sixth grade.”

Reese gave the phone back. “You’ve never seen real children involved in any of Garuccio’s projects, then?”

“Nah. Most of us wouldn’t put up with it. I mean, we’re porn actors, but we got standards, you know? Most of that stuff, the pro stuff, comes from overseas. Way easier to make there.”

“Does he have a web site?”

“Sure, for the store. That’s where he finds his movie clients.”

“Do you think he might have another one? Something more exotic?”

Trisha frowned at him. “Exotic?”

“Illegal.”

“With kids.”

“Yes.”

Trisha gave it some thought. “I don’t know. I just work for him, you know? He calls me for a role, I show up, he pays me. That’s about it. I’ve never seen anything like that, the kids and whatever. But if there’s money in it, he’d totally do it. He’d screw his grandmother on camera for a buck, you know?”

The waitress brought their food. Trisha started in eagerly. Reese found he wasn’t very hungry.

 ***

 


	11. Chapter 11

Christine boiled some homemade pierogis from her freezer, then fried them in butter for their dinner. Finch was very hungry and they were delicious. “These are fantastic. Did you make these yourself?”

“No,” she admitted freely. “The church ladies down the block make them during Lent. I buy as many as I have freezer space for. I can usually make them last all summer. And then at Christmas I can get more.”

“Excellent planning.”

When they were finished, Christine washed the dishes and put them away while Finch continued patching. If he’d said something, he knew, she would have left the dishes until morning, but her OCD would have distracted her all the while they sat in the sink. It wasn’t worth mentioning. She was perfectly aware of her compulsive tendencies, and battling them as well as she could.

Chaos, Finch realized, was her one place to let disorder reign. But as she’d told him, she couldn’t live down there. She could only visit, and then retreat to her achingly orderly world.

Her idea to have Zelda check previous patches was paying off; one out of every three or four stalls was self-correcting. But they were barely a third of the way through the vast database.

It was going to take all night. But Finch didn’t mind. He had the feeling that Christine didn’t, either.

She rejoined him. After a few minutes of code patching, she said, “There’s something still wrong with this.”

“Hmm?”

“What we’ve sorted out so far. The files are still too big for what they are.”

Finch nodded. “Yes. Which suggests?”

“That there’s something else hidden within them.”  She sighed. “And you noticed that how long ago?”

“A little while.”

Christine growled at him. “Any guesses?”

“I hate guessing. But I have another program running to tease it out.”

“And you weren’t going to mention it.”

“You’re not going to learn for yourself if I spoon-feed you. I knew you’d catch on eventually.”

She looked at him, equal parts annoyed and amused.

Unexpectedly, the whole left smart screen flashed bright green.

“Zelda?” Christina asked.

”I’ve found Honey,” the computer announced.

“Where, Z?”

“Locating.” The flashing stopped and the screen displayed a grid map of the city. After a very long thirty seconds, a red X appeared on the map.

“What businesses are at that location, Zelda?” Finch asked.

Christine shook her head bitterly. “Don’t bother. I know that office. That’s Venture East. Damn it.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Harold said quickly. He dropped back into the chair and opened the surveillance camera feed from Campanella’s office. It was dim, empty. “It’s not him.”

“Dover’s office,” she said.

It took Harold a minute to hack into the general security system for the firm. While he worked, he placed a phone call. “Mr. Reese? We’ve located the external drive.”

“About time,” Reese answered gruffly. “Where is it?”

“At Venture East,” Christine told him. “But not Campanella. We’re looking.”

“How are you coming with Mr. Garuccio?” Finch asked.

“He’s sleazy,” Reese said. “Very probably sleazy enough to be behind this.”

“If he is, we’ll have him by morning.” He frowned at his monitor. “I’m into Venture East’s security, but I can’t get to Dover’s office.” Christine started toward him, then stopped and sat down. She’d remembered that hanging over his shoulder had annoyed him. He kept working on it while he spoke. “Mr. Reese, we’re also discovered something else hidden under the black web.”

“What is it?”

“We’re not sure yet. Something fairly small, probably images rather than video. Sorting it out now.”

“Secrets inside secrets,” Reese observed.

“Yes.”

“Once we get this web reassembled,” Christine asked, “how are we going to drop it?”

“You’re going to load it on a box just like the one you burned,” Reese told her. “I’m going to put it in Larry Dover’s house, and then Finch is going to send a link from Dover’s e-mail, set up to look like a dead man’s drop.”

“Simple enough,” Finch said.

“Sure,” she said. “Remind me never to cross you guys.”

“We’ll remind you,” Reese promised, “if we need to.”

“This also has the advantage of leading them to Dover’s body without our overt involvement.” Finch shook his head. “Your Mr. Getty is proving to be almost as elusive as you are.”

“Almost?”

“Almost.” He sat back. “I’m in.”

He sent the view to one of the big screens and stood to join her there. “Mr. Reese, Matthew Getty has the hard drive in Mr. Dover’s old office.”

“So it’s right back where it started,” Reese said.

They watched and listened while Getty stared at the screen of his laptop. While he swore and pounded his big shiny desk with both fists.

Christine knocked her forehead against the screen, gently but repeatedly. “Dumb, dumb, dumb. He was out with appendicitis. That’s when the system got all borked up.”

“It wasn’t Dover,” Finch said. “It was Getty.”

“I’m on my way,” Reese said.

On the screen, Getty looked up towards the door. “Mae,” he said. “I said I’d call you.”

A woman came into view. She was small, blonde, dressed plainly, about fifty years old. She glanced over her shoulder at the camera. “Your office is secure?”

“Of course. What are you doing here?”

“I came for my files.”

Even on grainy surveillance video, Getty looked frightened. ”I have them right here,” he said. “I told you I did.”

“Show me.”

“I, uh … they’re still encrypted. But I can get them.”

“You said corrupted before.”

“Corrupted. Yes. Well, both. Corrupted and encrypted. But I can fix it. I can. I just need a little more time.”

“Are you lying to me, Kevin?”

Christine said, “His name’s Matthew.”

“Finch?” Reese called. “What’s going on?”

Finch keyed the phone to let him watch the live feed. “I don’t know. There’s someone with him. Someone he’s afraid of.”

In the office, the woman looked over Getty’s shoulder. “Show me, Kevin.”

“It’s just … I have them here … I can get them … I just need more time. Just a little more time. I can get them back.”

“Get them _back_. So you did lose them.”

“No, no,” Frey said. “No, I always had them. I always …”

“You lied to me, Kevin.”

“Mae, it’s fine, I have them right here, I can get them back …”

“I can’t have you lying to me, Kevin. “

“I swear to God, Mae …”

“Swear to anyone you like,” she said calmly. “But if I can’t trust you, Kevin, I can’t use you.”

Finch knew what was about to happen. He also knew he could do nothing to stop it. He couldn’t look away from the bigger-than-life image on the screen, but he reached out blindly, took Christine’s hand. “Don’t look.”

The woman in the office pulled a gun and shot Kevin Frey in the head.

It was very loud for an instant, and then very quiet. The quiet surprised Finch. The death of a man should be something more than an instant of noise and a soft slump onto a shiny desk. It shouldn’t be so easy, he thought, to extinguish a life. That part never stopped surprising him.

He finally managed to look away, at Christine. She was still staring at the screen. Her face was blank, expressionless. In her eyes was a look he knew too well; on Reese he called it the forever stare. “Christine.”  She didn’t look away from the screen, but her fingers folded over his fiercely.

“Christine!” he snapped. She finally looked at him. Her fingers relaxed a little.

“Finch,” Reese said, “you need to get ready to move.”

“The program needs hands-on attention,” Finch protested.

“Then send it to your own system. That woman’s some kind of government, and it won’t take her long to figure out that Getty doesn’t have what she wants. And after that she’ll come for the girl.”

Finch nodded. “All right.” He turned Christine toward him. “I need to you set Zelda for remote access. Then shut everything down.”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t argue. She went to the keyboards and set to work. She was still expressionless, working on autopilot. But from her that would be good enough.

A cell phone rang.

Christine stood up, pulled her phone out of her back pocket.

“Don’t answer that,” Finch warned.

She looked at the caller ID, then at the screen. In Getty’s office, the woman with the gun held the dead man’s phone and waiting impatiently for Christine to answer.

Christine stared down at the phone like it was an alien artifact. “Should have left it turned off,” she said quietly.

“She’ll be on her way,” Reese said urgently. “You need to get out of that apartment.”

“Can she get in here?” Finch took the phone out of Christine’s hand and dropped it into his pocket. It finally stopped ringing. 

“She can burn the building down around you, Finch.”

Christine sat back down and continued to work with her system. “Two minutes,” she said.

“Finch, get on the surveillance cameras, watch for a team. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Finch moved to the screen and brought up the outside views. “Christine,” Reese continued, “what’s the most unexposed way out of there?”

“Tunnels,” Christine said.

“What?”

She straightened up, seemed to gather herself. “There’s no meth lab, but there really are secret tunnels. We can get six blocks from here undergound.”  Finch turned to stare at her. “What?” She gestured to the apartment. “I like backups. Did you think it was all about nostalgia?”

“Where will you go?” Reese asked.

Finch hesitated. He needed his system – his whole system, at the library. He needed for Christine to be somewhere safe. “I could … take her with me … to where my … set-up is.” His chest hurt; he could barely get the words out.

Reese was silent. He probably didn’t like the idea of taking the girl to the library, but it was Finch’s system and his call.

Christine shook her head. “I can stay in the tunnels. I’ll be okay.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone.” Especially not on the streets, he thought. Not where you can score heroin.

“I do just fine alone.”

Finch shook his head emphatically. “No. Not now.” He was being tremendously unfair to her, he knew. She hadn’t given the slightest hint that she would ever go back to using. But he also knew that it was an ever-present danger for addicts. He couldn’t forget what she’s looked like that night in the pizza parlor. On the floor of the car. Between the big white-clad orderlies …. He couldn’t let her fall back there. He couldn’t take the chance.

“Hold on,” Reese said. There was a pause and then another phone rang. “What?” Fusco said.

“Where are you?” Reese asked.

“Half-way home. Why?”

“Turn around, come back toward the bar. I’ll send you an address in a minute. I need you to pick up the girl and stay with her at a safe house.”

Fusco didn’t hesitate to agree. “Chrissy’s okay with that?”

“I am,” she called, “if you promise never to call me Chrissy again.”

He chuckled. “Damn, I hate these conference call things. What am I supposed to call you then?”

“Christine. Or Scottie. You pick.”

“Scottie,” he said. “Like that guy on Star Trek.”

“Sure, okay.”

“Ten minutes,” Fusco promised.

“Done,” Christine announced. The system began to shut down. “Press that button,” she said. Finch pressed the touchpad and the big screens flared, went flexible, and rolled up.

He held her phone out to her. “I need you to unprotect this.”

She didn’t ask why. She simply entered a code, checked it, and handed it back.

“Bring your laptop,” Finch said.

She grabbed it from under the counter, then moved the chair back to the corner and activated the bookcases so that the whole system concealed itself. She looked around. “Okay.”

“Leave the window open like you did for Moodey,” Reese instructed. “And send me the passcode for the locks.”

“We’re on our way,” Finch said. He took one last look around the apartment. Everything was neat, as if no one else had been there.  He cracked the window open. Christine shoved her laptop into a bag, added her small purse. Grabbed a jacket and a thick paperback. “Ready?”

“Key.” She opened a cupboard and grabbed a mug rom the top shelf. She dumped a key out into her palm and replaced the mug. Then she also took a pen light off the side of the refrigerator. Finch went out the front door ahead of her, cautiously, but there was no one in the little lobby. “Door code,” she said in the elevator. Finch brought out his phone and she entered the lock code.

She stopped in the café long enough to give Zubec some quick instructions. He didn’t like what she told him, but Finch noted that he didn’t argue long. He knew her well enough, clearly, to know that she rarely lost an argument.

She led Finch down a narrow set of stairs to the basement. “Thank you,” he said as they crossed the mostly-empty storage room.

“For what?”

“For understanding about the … Bat Cave. I’m sure you must be curious.”

“I’m wildly curious,” she admitted. She led him down a short corridor. “And if the day ever comes when the thought of showing me doesn’t cause you actual physical pain, I would love to see it. But we aren’t there yet. And you don’t need the distraction.”

Behind a pile of dusty boxes and empty beer crates there was a very old, heavy-looking wooden door. Christine brought out her key and unlocked it.

The key ring had only one key and a little tag, in the shape of a daisy.

“Besides,” she said, pushing the door open, “I suspect the state of your tech would make me weep in despair.”

She turned on her flashlight and led him into the tunnel. It was dark and damp, but also wide and tall enough for the two of them to walk comfortably side-by-side. The floor was made of smooth sandstone squares, the same material as the sidewalk in front of the café.

 “Very nice,” Finch said quietly. “Can I get a copy of that key?”

“We’ll see,” she answered. She touched his arm, had him turn as she closed the door behind them. “That mark over the door?” She trained the light on the door frame. On one corner there was a white mark. “If it’s on the hinge side, like this one, the door opens into a concealed space. If it’s over the handle side, it opens into open space where you may be seen.”

Finch nodded. “Is there a map?”

“No. But I could make one.” She turned again, led him down the tunnel away from the bar. “Wireless and phones are very intermittent down here. If you get close to an outside wall they’ll usually work. There are lots of cracks.”

At the end of the corridor was a small chamber. The floor was still sandstone, but the walls were made of wood. At one time they’d been painted. There were light fixtures on the walls, but Finch got a glimpse of the wiring and wouldn’t have dared to turn them on. Across the room was another door. Christine unlocked it and they stepped through.

By the sound and feel of the air, Finch could tell the space on the other side was huge. He took the light from Christine’s hand and looked around. He could see round tables, with their chairs set up on them. Chandeliers. A wooden stage, and in front of it a broad wooden dance floor. A thirty-foot long bar on each side. What looked like a roulette wheel, half-covered with an old sheet. There was carpet on the floor, ripped up in places. The room was the size of a grand ballroom. It had been elegant once. A massive secret drinking palace.

And it had gone out of business the instant Prohibition was repealed.

It was not silent here. He could hear movement from the street above, from the businesses above. And something else. Something closer, furtive.

Christine took his arm gently, brought him to a stop. She took the light back, pointed it at the ground in front of them. Then she brought something out of her jacket pocket – money, Finch realized – folded it between her fingers, and held her hand out to her side.

The man appeared from nowhere. He stayed mostly in the shadows, but Finch gathered an impression that he was small and quick, and that he smelled awful. He snatched for the money; Christine pulled it back. “Hank,” she said, “where’s Pony?”

The shadow man grunted. “He ain’t here.”

“Why not?”

“Went to the hospital. His sugar’s bad.”

“He need anything?”

Another grunt. “He didn’t say. I’ll let you know.”

“Good. This is Mr. Finch. He may be back some time, on my key. You’ll give him safe passage.”

“Huh.”

“Hank.”

“Safe passage. Sure.”

She held out the money again. The shadow man snagged it and vanished.

“You have interesting neighbors,” Finch said, very quietly, as they moved across the abandoned speakeasy.

“Hank’s okay. Pony’s got a little better memory, but Hank should be okay.”

“You know all of them down here, don’t you?”

“Daisy does.” She shrugged. “I lived down here for a while.”

Finch shuddered. “Speaking of weeping in despair.”

“Don’t.” Christine squeezed his arm. “You’re the one who told me I didn’t have to die here.”

“I didn’t think you were listening.”

“I wasn’t, then. But later on, when I could think straight … I heard every word.”

Finch nodded in the darkness. “I’m glad you believed me.”

 ***

Reese drove as fast as he could without attracting attention. He was closer to Chaos than the woman who’d killed Getty was, and he knew where he was going, so he was sure he’d be there before her. But if she’d called in a team, as she should have, they might well have an advantage.

He held his phone against the steering wheel with one hand as he drove, watching the woman. Aside from her attempt to call Christine with Getty’s phone, she didn’t make any calls before she left the office. She took the hard drive with her.

It was puzzling.

Whatever files she was looking for, Getty hadn’t told her that he’d lost them. And based on her behavior, she hadn’t told her superiors that they were missing, either. That could be useful.

Unless she had a team waiting just out of camera range, which was very possible.

Reese put his phone away and concentrated on driving.

 ***

Fusco parked his car in front of an empty storefront and checked the address on his phone again. It was the right place. He got out, looked around. The street was dead empty. There were stores open at each end of the block, a little foot traffic there, but nothing here in the middle.

It looked like the kind of place Daisy would have hung out, back in the day. He didn’t like it.

But Reese said she was doing okay now.

He waited a couple minutes. About the time he reached for his phone, she came up an old stairway from the basement of the building. Reese’s boss was with her. Fusco barely looked at him. The girl – Reese was right. She looked good. She’d gotten tall. Well, not tall, really, not any taller than the guy with the glasses, but a lot taller than the little shrimp she had been. She was pretty, too. The way he’d thought she’d be pretty that first afternoon. She didn’t look like a starving refugee any more.

“Thank you for coming, Detective,” Finch said. He handed him a slip of paper. “There’s an address, and the code for the lock. You should be safe there.”

“Sure,” Fusco said. He took the paper without looking away from the girl. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she answered quietly. And then, “I’ve had better days.”

“You’ve had worse,” Fusco answered before he could stop himself.

She took it the right way. “True.”

Finch touched her arm. “Stay off the internet unless I call you. I’ll let you know when it’s all clear.”

She nodded solemnly. She looked frightened.

“This is almost over, Christine. I promise.”

“I know. And … thank you.”

Fusco opened the passenger door for her and she got in, settled her bag on her lap. He shut the door, looked at the little guy. “Anything I need to know?”

“Just keep her inside. Stay close to her. And don’t buy her any cigarettes. Or anything else.”

The detective knew exactly what he meant. “Is that an issue?”

“No. Just an abundance of caution. Call when you’re at the safe house.”

“You got it.” Fusco walked around the car and got into the driver’s seat. By the time he looked in the mirror, the man had vanished. “Wish I knew how he did that,” he said to himself.

“What?”

He shook his head. “That guy. What do you call him?”

“Random.”

“Random? You’re kidding, right?”

“That’s not his name.”

“Yeah, I know. I don’t think even he knows his real name any more.” Fusco looked at the address, started the car. “And you got new names, too, huh?”

“Names have power,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“If you know something’s true name …” She stopped, shrugged. Hugged her bag against her chest. She got pale, shaky.

“You okay?”

“I am having the mother of all flashbacks right now.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You and me both.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let them call you.”

”Nah,” Fusco said, “it’s okay. I’m glad I can help. What’d you get yourself into, anyhow?”

Christine looked out the window for a long moment. He thought she wasn’t going to answer. Finally, though, she said, “I stepped on a porn ring by accident.”

“Porn?”

“Kids.”

“Oh.” She sounded sick about it. Fusco didn’t want to pursue it, and didn’t know what to say. “You, uh, you can still run the lights if you want.”

She looked over at him, and after a minute she came up with a little smile. “Thanks, Fusco.” She took a long breath. “I’m really sorry about all the times I jacked you around.”

He smirked. “Yeah, you were kind of a pain in my ass back in the day.”

“You enabled me,” she said lightly. “But I appreciate everything you did for me. Thank you.”

He was embarrassed, and pleased. “Sure, kid.” They stopped at an intersection and he looked at her again. In the right light she still looked like that cocky little brat. “Can I ask you something, though? How come you live over the Happy Hours?”

“Oh. My. God. What is with you guys and bitching about my apartment?”

“What? John said something, too?”

“ _And_ Finch. What the hell? I’ve had three bodies drop behind me today and all you guys think I should be thinking about where I freaking live … that’s it. That’s _it_. The next one of you that so much as _mentions_ my apartment between now and Labor Day, I swear to God I’ll destroy your credit rating.”

Fusco laughed. “Yeah, well, you’re too late, my ex-wife already took care of that, so you better come up with a better threat.”

Christine eyed him. “Your ex trashed your credit rating?”

“Oh, sister, you would not believe.”

“I can fix it.”

“What?”

“I can fix your credit. It’s all computer-generated, there’s nothing to it. I can’t make it perfect, not without attracting attention, but I can make it better.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Sure.”

“Is it legal?”

“Of course it’s not legal. What do you care?”

Fusco shrugged. “True. Sure, that’d be great.”

“And you’ll lay off the apartment until Labor Day?”

“Why Labor Day?”

“Because that’s the minimum amount of time I need to get my head straight behind all of this. We have a deal?”

Fusco thought about it a minute. He couldn’t see a down side. She wasn’t going to budge about the apartment anyhow. “Sure. Deal.”

“Good.”

They were quiet for a minute. Then Christine reached out, very gingerly, and flipped a switch on the dashboard. Blue light flickered around the car from the strobes. She shut it off. “Yeah. That was kinda fun.”

Fusco shook his head. She was a nut. But she was okay.

 ***

Finch watched the detective’s car from the shadows until it was out of sight. Then he set out on foot and keyed Reese’s phone “The girl’s on her way.”

“Good,” Reese said. “We need to find out what else is in that data, Finch.”

“I will get to that as quickly as I can,” Finch said. He paused at the end of the block and looked around. “Just need to drop something off first.” He headed north, away from his car, toward the police station. As he’d hoped, within another block he saw a patrol car. He stepped to the curb and waved at it in his most non-threatening way.

The cop pulled the car over and rolled down the passenger-side window. “What’s up?”

“I’m sorry to bother you.” Finch leaned close to the open window. “I seem to be a little lost. Can you tell me the best way to get to Time Square from here?”

The cop shook his head. “Yeah. Get your GPS fixed.”

“I’ve been meaning to do that, yes.”

“All right.” The cop sighed, but began to gesture. “You go up here, turn right at the light …”

As with most people, he was incapable of giving directions without actually looking the way he was directing. Finch waited until his head was turned. Then he slipped Christine’s phone through the window and dropped it between the cage and the back seat. It slithered to the floor, landed with a soft thump. The officer didn’t notice.

When Finch had thanked him for the directions and stepped away from the car, the cop hopefully drove away with Christine’s pursuers.

 ***

Reese stood in the alley and looked at the café again. The place was full, as it seemed to be every night. Zubec was behind the bar. Reese thought he looked unhappy. He knew their girl was in trouble.

It had to be a confusing relationship for the man, he thought. Christine’s father had tried to kill Zubec; Christine had saved his life. His bar was failing; she gave him a new career and a free place to live. She was half his age and a third his size, and he took orders from her because she was twice as smart. At least. Zubec seemed to take it all in stride, most of the time. But he was very protective of her.

It wasn’t really surprising that Christine Fitzgerald wasn’t afraid of men. She seemed to have a knack for getting her way with them. Even Finch wasn’t immune to her charms. More resistant than most, perhaps, but not immune.

If I’m honest, Reese thought, even _I’m_ not immune. She knew the monster and did not fear it. There was something deeply powerful in that. She was just a pretty girl, smart and badly damaged by her past. But something in her softened his defenses. 

He’d been right about her. She was dangerous in a way he’d never seen before.

And for the moment, still in danger.

He glanced at his watch. Getty’s killer should be here right about …

As if he’d summoned it, a four-door black sedan drove slowly past the café. Just the driver, no passengers. It turned at the corner. Reese moved down the block a bit, until he could see down the alley. It took the woman a few minutes; she probably checked the back door. Then she made for the fire escape.

She didn’t move like a field operative. She had trouble getting the ladder down, and she wasn’t quick climbing it. But she got herself into the apartment, and she didn’t turn any lights on once she was in.

He touched his earpiece. “Finch? Our guest has arrived.”

“Alone?”

“Apparently. I’ll have a look around to make sure.”

“I’m just back at the library,” Finch said. “I’ll see if I can find out what she’s looking for. And I’ve found another external drive to load.”

“Anybody report the gunshot?”

“I’ll check, but I highly doubt it. There aren’t many people around there this time of night.”

“Good. That will give us a little time.”

“There’s no way to keep Campanella out of this now, of course,” Finch said.

“Not with a dead man in his office,” Reese agreed. “But we might be able to mitigate the damage.”

“I’m listening.”

“Just get me the files, Finch.”

 ***

Fusco drew his weapon and checked the apartment. It was clear, of course. He put his gun away and got his phone out. “Hey,” he said when Reese answered. “We’re here.”

“Good. Keep the door locked.”

“Yeah, thanks, I never would have thought of that.” He hung up the phone, flopped onto the couch next to the girl. She was still awfully pale. “Well. Here we are. You want to watch a movie or something?”

It seemed like it was a real struggle for her to have a conversation, but she tried. “What would you do if I wasn’t here?”

“Have a beer. Watch the ball game.”

“God, I would love a beer.”

“I checked. There isn’t any.” 

“Of course not. But I’m okay with the ball game. If you promise not to make fun of me.”

“Why would I make fun of you? You don’t know the rules or what?”

She stood up, started going through drawers. “It’s worse than that.” She found a pad of paper and a pen and came back to the couch. “I have to keep a scorecard.”

“A scorecard. You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. It’s an OCD thing. I think. It might be something else.”

“A scorecard.”

“You want to watch the game or not?”

“Sure.” Fusco turned on the TV. “You’re weird, kid.”

“I always have been.”

He nodded. “Yeah. But I like you anyhow.”

 ***

Finch settled in behind his desk and partitioned his own hard drive, then pulled in the files. It took a few minutes to upload. While he waited, he looked around. A big screen, he thought, and a rolling keyboard stand. It had seemed like a good idea at Christine’s apartment. Now it felt like too big of a change to bother with.

He’d think about it.

It was quiet in the library, and he was aware that he felt a great sense of relief at being alone to work. It was his own system and his own security, for one thing. But it was more than that. He wasn’t a social creature by nature, any more than the girl was, and spending hours on end with her had been pleasant but exhausting.

He set the two pieces of the file sorting on two separate screens and began patching as needed. On a third screen, between his interventions on the first two, he re-started the program that would tease out whatever was hidden beneath them.

When everything was running, he made himself, finally, a decent cup of real tea.

He liked Christine Fitzgerald. He even liked Zelda, once he got used to her. But it was good to be home.

 ***

 


	12. Chapter 12

The Chaos Café was closed. Zubec had spent more time than usual cleaning up, but finally, and John thought probably grudgingly, he’d gone up to bed. It must infuriate the man to know that there was someone in the apartment right above him, someone that Christine had not invited in. Someone who meant to harm her. But the girl was safely away, and Zubec played his part by pretending ignorance and doing nothing.

The woman had left the apartment after a few minutes. She still had Getty’s phone, and they were able to track her while she tracked Christine’s phone around the area. Eventually, she’d figured out that it was in a squad car and come back to the apartment.

She was still alone. There was no back-up team. Reese watched and waited.

The night deepened. The pulse of the city slowly, quieted. It was never silent, not here, but it was hushed. John sat in the alley with his back to the wall and listened. He remembered nights in the desert when it was so quiet he could hear the wind pushing tiny grains of sand around. Nights in the jungle so loud he couldn’t hear himself think. But nothing was quite like New York.

In another hour, he knew, it would all shift again. The late-nighters would head home, brushing past the early risers. The day would start all over again. One day after another after another. It had been strange to him when he first came here. Now he knew the city, knew its moods, knew its pulse. He liked it best at night.

Walking in the dark, Cara would have said. Being the dark. But Cara was gone, and John was starting to think, just once in a while in quietest part of the night, that maybe he could find his way back to the light.

His phone chirped very softly against his ear and he keyed it on. “Good morning, Finch.”

“Just about. I have something for you, finally.”

“I never had any doubt.” His phone chirped again, and Reese brought it out to look at the screen.

“That’s Matthew Getty,” Finch said. “His real name is Kevin Frey – only that’s probably not his real name either – and you and he have a former employer in common.”

“Agency,” Reese guessed. “He’s a NOC.”

“Non-official Cover. Yes. He seems to have been placed at Venture East for the purpose of maintaining the black web in order to cover the redistribution of highly classified data, mostly photos.”

“Show me.” The first photo came up. It was too tiny to see anything on his phone; he widened out a corner of it. “Weapons system,” Reese said. He scrolled around the screen. It was still too small to get a good look at it. “Some kind of missile.”

“There are six others that seem related to that one,” Finch said. “They were all embedded underneath the same movie, an epic entitled … well, never mind. But all seven were together.”

“Steganography. That’s pretty old-school for the Agency.”

“Even Bin Laden used it,” Finch agreed. “But it’s still effective. Especially if it’s hidden under something so vile that no one would want to look for it.”

“Unless it’s so vile that someone who finds it by accident immediately destroys it with thermite.”

“True. So far I’ve found eleven movies that have images hidden within them. And I must say, I’m very glad Miss Fitzgerald isn’t here looking over my shoulder. It’s … vile is a good word.”

“Anything on the woman who shot Frey?”

“Nothing yet,” Finch answered. “I think we can safely assume she’s also CIA, but I haven’t been able to identify her.”

“Some kind of middle management,” Reese said. “Maybe on a disability reassignment of some kind.”

“I’ll keep looking. But if the CIA thinks that Christine has their files, I don’t see how we can keep her away from them indefinitely.”

Reese looked up and down the street. There was still no sign of any backup for the shooter. “That may be less of a problem than we think. Have you finished making the hamburger back into steak?”

“It’s loading onto the external hard drive now. Should be done in about twenty minutes.”

“Good. Let’s get this over with.”

 ***

** 2001 **

Fusco and his partner stood at the east side of the pile, just outside the makeshift wire fence. They were supposed to be guarding against looters and troublemakers. But they’d spent most of their time keeping out earnest civilians who wanted climb in and help, or giving directions to people from out of town who were looking for hospitals or shelters or anywhere else their missing loved ones might be. Or herding gawkers away from the hundreds of news crews that circled the site endlessly.

He stared out at the pile. It was almost pretty, with the sun setting through the dust. And then it was just sad.

Someone stopped next to him. Fusco glanced over. Then he looked again.

Chrissy – Daisy – whatever the hell her name was this week – was still thin as a rail. But she looked fresh-scrubbed, her hair brushed, her clothes cheap but all in one piece. She had a big messenger bag over her shoulder, bulky and full. He thought she had a silver cast on one arm, but when he looked closer he realized it was six rolls of duct tape, worn like bangle bracelets all the way up past her elbow. He knew what she was using it for. The posters were all over the place, covering every flat surface.

She reached into the bag, brought out a bottle of water, and handed it to him.

“Thanks.”

“Sure.”

He looked at her again. For the first time in a long time her eyes were clear and focused. “You get clean?” he asked.

“Working on it.”

“Need some help?”

“Got some, thanks. I’m through the worst of it.”

“You picked a hell of a time.”

“I think my dealer’s in the pile.”

Fusco snorted. “Best news I heard since this happened.”

She just shrugged.

“You got enough to eat?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

They looked at the pile for a while. The rescue guys kicked on the giant flood lights and turned the dusk into fake midday again.

The girl sighed. “Be safe, Fusco.”

“You, too.”

She handed a bottle of water to his partner and wandered off into the city.

 ###

** 2012 **

Fusco woke with a start. He sat up, looked around. The TV was still on; some old sit-com was talking quietly to itself. Christine had kicked her shoes off and was curled up at the other end of the couch in a tiny little ball. She had her scorecard in her lap, but she’d been asleep since the sixth inning. 

Fusco rubbed the back of his neck. He got up quietly and walked around the apartment. Checked the windows and the doors. It was a nice place. Looked like nobody lived here. Hell of a lot of money to spend for no one to live here.

He went back to the living room. The girl hadn’t moved. Well, having somebody trying to kill her could wear a girl out. She’d been lucky Reese got to her when he did. But it wasn’t really luck. Reese had some weird way of knowing about stuff like that.

Fusco shook his head. He didn’t know how Reese did it, him and his strange little friend, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know. What mattered was that the girl – Chrissy or Daisy or Christine or Scottie or anything else she wanted to call herself – was safe. And knowing Reese like he did, Fusco was pretty sure she’d stay that way.

He looked around again. Then he took a pillow off the couch, fluffed it up, and settled into the big chair across from her. He put his feet up on the coffee table. Whoever could afford this place could afford to have the scuff marks cleaned off. He closed his eyes again.

A minute later he opened them, took his feet down, and kicked off his shoes. Then he put his feet back up and went back to sleep.

 ***

“What are you going to do with it?” Finch asked anxiously.

Reese turned the thumb drive in his hand, slipped it into his pocket. “I’m going to buy an insurance policy for our girl.”

Finch looked up at the apartment windows. “Mae Miller. Formerly a field operative once, shattered both legs on a mission in 1992. Been stuck in middle management ever since.” He looked at John. “We know she’s a killer. Are you really going to trust her?”

“I’m going to trust that she’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive. You sure you can handle Dover’s house? He’s been dead a while.”

Finch made a face, but he nodded. “I’ll manage.”

“Don’t drop the file until I call you.”

“I understand.” Finch looked at him, almost asked another question, and then didn’t. “Be careful.”

“You, too.”

“Mine’s already dead,” Finch reminded him. “If he gives me any trouble, we have much bigger problems than we anticipated.”

Reese nodded. “You have a point.” He waited until Finch was out of sight. Then he walked toward the café.

“I’ll take care of it right now,” Reese promised.

The barista pulled a trash can into the doorway. “You yell, I’m comin’ up there.”

Reese nodded. “Appreciate it.”

The big man retreated, leaving his door propped open a foot.

John made his way to the top floor and keyed in the combination, not quickly. He pushed the door open six inches, then paused, reached around the door, and grabbed her weapon.

The woman tried to hold onto it, but Reese wrenched it over her head and slammed the door into her body. She released the gun and backed away quickly, then dove behind the couch.

Reese did not chase her. He aimed her gun toward the center of the couch and said, calmly, “If you stand up with that backup gun in your hand, I will kill you.”

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded from behind cover.

“My name’s John Reese. We probably have mutual friends.”

There was a very long silence from behind the couch. She knew the name; she was going through everything she knew about him. Calculating. He gave her all the time she needed. “John Reese is dead,” she finally stated.

“Mark Snow lies.”

Another silence. She knew that was true, too. “What do you want?” she finally asked.

“Strangely enough, Mae, I want to help you.”

“How?”

“I have your pictures.”

“What?”

“The pictures that Frey was supposed to have. I have them. And I’m prepared to give them to you.”

“I’m supposed to believe you.”

“I don’t think you have much choice.” Reese moved sideways toward the kitchen. “I’m tired of talking to the couch, Mae.”

“How do I know you won’t kill me?”

“You don’t.”

He took another step, silently, and then another. Two more and he’d have a clear shot at her.

A little .22 scraped across the wood floor toward him. Reese stopped it with his toe, kicked it behind the breakfast bar. “Very good. Now come on out.”

The woman stood up slowly, awkwardly. She stayed behind the couch and studied him. Reese got the feeling she decided she’d made the right decision.

“You have my pictures,” she finally said.

Reese brought the thumb drive out with one hand, without lowering the gun in the other. “Right here. Thing is, Mae, they’re not your pictures. They’re not the Agency’s pictures. Unless I’m mistaken, these pictures belong to the NSA. And we both know they will be _very_ cranky if they find out you have them.”

Mae came to the end of the couch, perched on the arm. “You got me. What do you want?”

He tipped the gun in his hand. “This is the gun you killed Frey with, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Kevin Frey. Also knows as Matthew Getty. Recently promoted to IT Director at Venture East Financial. You shot him in his office late last night. We have it on video.”

“Who’s we?”

Reese shook his head. “Is this the gun?”

She looked away, but didn’t deny it.

“Good.” He dropped the gun into his pocket. “You know that Frey was hiding the pictures inside pornographic movies. Did you know they involved children?”

Mae looked back at him. “What?”

“Kiddie porn.”

She shook her head, disgusted. “What an idiot.”

“No argument there. He was making a little profit on the side, getting a cut for persuading Dover to host a black web. Everybody had their fingers in the pie.”

“Why do I care about this?”

“Because the kiddie porn is what got Christine Fitzgerald involved. She didn’t know about your pictures – sorry, NSA’s pictures. And she didn’t care. She found the porn and she destroyed it. That’s the beginning and the end of her involvement in this.”

The woman stared at him.

“Frey didn’t tell you he’d lost the pictures,” Reese continued. “And once you found out, you didn’t tell Snow. If you had, you wouldn’t be here alone. You probably wouldn’t be here at all. You know how the Agency feels about cleaning up its own messes.” She flinched, just a little; he knew he was right. “So here’s how this goes down. I give you the pictures. You take them somewhere else and hide them. I don’t care where, but it had better not involve children. Tell Snow that Frey was compromised; tell him whatever you want. He never has to know that you lost possession of the pictures. And as a bonus, I’ll arrange for the porn dealer to take the fall for Frey’s murder.”

“That’s very generous, Mr. Reese. What’s in it for you?” she asked.

“You never heard of Christine Fitzgerald. You lose her phone number and you forget where she lives. As far as you know, she was never even born. Because if she ever has even the faintest reason to be afraid of you, if she even thinks she sees your shadow at her door, you won’t have to worry about the tape of you murdering Frey. There won’t be any trial. Are we clear?”

Mae considered. “That’s it?”

“Of course, I was never here, either.”

She nodded. “Snow knows you’re alive?”

“He knows. He’s trying to change that.”

“Sounds like you’re in more danger than I am.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

Mae held her hand out for the flash drive. “Is this the only copy?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not.” She nodded. “All right, Mr. Reese. We have a deal.”

 ***

The sky was starting to lighten by the time Reese got to Garuccio’s home. The house itself was perfectly ordinary; there were petunias in the flower bed and a bird bath beside the porch. The garish Cadillac was in the garage. Reese forced the side door open; the car itself was still unlocked.

He wiped down Mae Miller’s gun and hid it carefully under the liner in the trunk.

On his way out, he called Finch. “Ready?”

“All set,” Finch answered.

“I’ll meet you back at the library. Bagels today?”

“That sounds lovely.”

 ***

Fusco parked down the block from the café. “Chaos, huh? That’s about right for you.”

Christine nodded wearily. “I thought so. Want some coffee?”

“Sure.”

They got out of the car. “Can I ask you something?” Fusco said as they walked.

“Is it about the apartment?”

“No.”

“Go ahead.”

“That morning, you said something I’ve always wondered about. You said … you said you just needed a little more time. I never could figure out what you were talking about. More time for what?”

“’On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.’”

“What?”

“It’s an old New Yorker cartoon.” She sighed. “You know how the internet is full of middle-aged men pretending to be fourteen year-old girls?”

“Yeah.”

“I was trying to make it work the other way. A fourteen year old girl pretending to be a middle-aged man. I was creating an identity as a psychiatrist. So I could make the VA admit my dad somewhere. I almost had it. I just … ran out of time.”

Fusco shook his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“It’s okay.” She stopped and put her arms around him. “It’s okay.”

He hugged her for a minute. It was nice. Over his shoulder, he saw a guy come out of the café and look at them. “Shit.”

“What?”

Fusco moved away from her just far enough to pull out his phone between their bodies. The guy went back inside. “We got trouble,” he said quietly. “Just, uh, just let me handle this …”

He dropped his phone into his pocket, still open, and walked the girl into the shop.

“Miss Fitzgerald?” Agent Donnelly said. “May I have a word with you?”

She looked at him. “Sure. Who are you?”

“This is Agent Donnelly,” Fusco said, without enthusiasm. “He’s with the FBI.”

“I didn’t realize you knew Detective Fusco,” he said formally.

“I’ve known Lionel since I was a little kid,” Christine said. “Please, sit down. Igor, set us up, will you?”

Zubec glared at them from behind the bar, but reached for mugs. They settled around a table. “What can I do for you, Agent … “

“Donnelly.” He brought out a picture. “Do you know this man?”

Christine studied the 5 x 7 glossy of John Reese. “No. Who is he?”

Fusco shook his head and looked away.

“He’s a rogue agent,” Donnelly told her. “A murderer. Possibly a terrorist.”

“Hmmm.”

Zubec brought them coffee, looked over her shoulder at the picture. Grunted.

“Do you know this man?” Donnelly asked him. 

“He’s kinda hot,” Christine said.

“Not really my type,” Zubec grumbled. He walked away.

“Igor doesn’t usually work mornings,” the girl explained. She handed the picture back. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

“Are you sure? We believe he has a partner. Someone extremely skilled with computers.”

Christine took a long drink of coffee. “So you think he’s a terrorist and I’m helping him?”

“I know you’re very well connected to the … tech community. You may know someone who knows him.”

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

Donnelly didn’t give up. “This man is extremely dangerous, Miss Fitzgerald. He may be part of a band of rogue agents …”

“Rogue agents,” she repeated. “That’s the second time you’ve said that. Whose rogue agents?”

“The CIA’s.”

“And you’re FBI, you said, right?” She nodded emphatically. “That’s really quite wonderful, Agent Donnelly. I can’t tell you how much that reassures me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Were you here when the Towers came down, Agent Donnelly? Here in the city?”

“No.”

“See, I was.” Her voice was sweet, without a hint of sarcasm. “And ever since then I’ve been scared to death that there would be another attack. But if the FBI has time to be chasing ‘rogue’ CIA agents around Manhattan, then that must mean that every possible outside threat has been dealt with, right? I mean, if there was even the smallest danger that we’d be hit again, you wouldn’t be wasting your time chasing each other, would you?”

Fusco looked away to hide his smirk. The expression on Donnelly’s face was priceless. He hoped Reese and his friend were listening.

“Miss Fitzgerald,” the agent said patiently, “this man and his cohorts are extremely dangerous. Under their mandate they aren’t even allowed to operate in this country. Their activities present a danger to civilians and probably a violation of their constitutional rights …”

“Ohhhh,” Christine interrupted. She no longer bothered to hide her sarcasm. “It’s a constitutional rights issue. Why didn’t you say so? ‘Cause the FBI’s hands are so clean where the Constitution is involved, aren’t they?”

“Excuse me?”

“Outside every Occupy protest there’s a van with no windows. If I were to hack into that van’s feeds, I wouldn’t find any warrantless wiretaps running, would I? And the feeds wouldn’t be going right to the nearest field office, would they?”

“That’s got nothing to do with this matter,” Donnell protested. “Surveillance decisions of that nature are made way over my pay grade …”

“And you just follow orders?” she challenged.

Donnelly stared at her. “Miss Fitzgerald …”

“Agent Donnelly, you seem like kind of a decent guy, and not entire dim. So I’m going to ask you to think about something. If we get hit tomorrow, if New York gets hit again or some other city, are you going to be able to look at yourself in the mirror the next day? Are you going to be able to say, a whole bunch of people are dead, but I did everything I could to stop it? Or are you going to say, the day before this happened, I was busy playing grab-ass with the CIA and not paying attention to the real threats? I could have helped stop this, maybe, but I was busy pissing on the bushes and marking my territory?”

Donnelly stood up. “Miss Fitzgerald. I’d like a look at your computer. Now.”

She shrugged. “Get a warrant.”

He glared at her. She glared back, unimpressed. Fusco kept his head down.

Zubec came to the end of the table and folded his arms. His meaning was very clear. But Donnelly refused to be intimidated. “The man I’m looking for is a terrorist,” he said clearly. “I suspect you of providing material support to him. Under the provisions of the Patriot Act, I can have you arrested and detained without trial indefinitely.”

Fusco looked up. “Hey, wait a minute…”

Christine put her hand on his arm. She continued to stare at Donnelly. “You can try that, Agent Donnelly,” she said. Her voice dropped, but stayed deadly calm, almost friendly. “But if I were you, I’d ask somebody first. Maybe somebody in Washington.”

They stared at each other for another minute. Finally Zubec leaned in and took Donnelly’s mug off the table. The FBI agent turned and strode out of the café.

“Damn.” Fusco slumped with relief. “What the hell was that?”

Christine patted his arm again. “You’re okay, Lionel. Drink your coffee.”

 ***

Reese looked at Finch over the computer monitors. “Our girl thinks she’s bulletproof.”

“Apparently.”

“Is she?”

Finch hesitated for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. “She may be. I’ll find out.”

 ***

Finch presented his card to the handsome woman at the reception desk and waited. He glanced to his left, where one door was sealed and garishly labeled as a crime scene. The rest of the office, though, seemed to be functioning normally. It had been six days since the shooting. The man who had killed Matthew Getty, a porn dealer named Garuccio, was safely behind bars, along with dozens of other people arrested in the largest child pornography sweep in the city’s history. Garuccio denied any involvement with the murder, but police had found the murder weapon hidden in his car.

Larry Dover, who had been Getty’s boss, had also been found dead. He’s died from a heart attack, and if there were whispers about the circumstances – something about more porn and bondage – they were only sad and knowing whispers. The murder in the office was certainly more interesting.

The receptionist knocked on a different door and then opened it. “Miss Fitzgerald? There’s a Mr. Wren here to see you.”

“Who?” Christine called from within.

The woman checked the card. “Harold Wren. From Universal Heritage Insurance? He says you’re expecting him.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Send him in.”

The receptionist hesitated. “Do you want a minute to, um …”

“No, don’t worry about it. He’s seen my naked feet before.”

The woman did not quite roll her eyes as she gestured Harold into the office, but it was clear that she suffered from the impropriety of the situation.

“I have,” he assured her in passing. “They’re quite lovely.”

She closed the door behind him with a not-quite-rude emphasis.

Christine was perched on the wide window ledge with her tablet in her hands. She wore a scoop-necked t-shirt and a short skirt, and her bare legs were stretched out in front of her on the ledge. There were no shoes in evidence. Her toenails were painted vibrant purple.

She was trying desperately not to fit in to Venture East’s corporate culture.

“Your receptionist seems like a lovely woman,” Finch said. “Why are we tormenting her?”

“She’s not the receptionist, she’s the administrative assistant,” Christine answered. ”She gets things done around here. And she has Campanella’s ear. I want her squawking in it so he’ll hire someone and get me out of here.”

“His last two IT directors betrayed his corporate philosophy and his friendship. His company is on the fringes of an extremely nasty criminal investigation. He wants you here because he trusts you.”

“I understand that he wants me to hold his hand. I sympathize, I do. But when I said I’d fill in for a little while, I meant for a week and he heard for a year.” She shuddered. “I can’t do this, Random.”

He crossed the office to her. “It’s only been three days, Christine. Is it really that bad?”

“I can’t figure out how to get the windows open.” He looked out and down; the office was on the 23rd floor. “If I ask nicely, will Mr. Reese show me the proper technique for slashing my own throat?”

Finch chuckled, brought a single sheet of paper out of his pocket, folded in half. “Here. The names of six qualified candidates, all thoroughly vetted, with the starting salaries they’ll likely require.”

She snagged the paper like it was a lifeline. “Thank you.” She swung her feet down, dug in her skirt pocket and came up with a flash drive. “This is for you. It’s a pocket-sized FBI agent.”

“Agent Donnelly, I presume.” Finch took the drive.

Christine tapped on her tablet, held it out to him. “This morning, in my apartment.”

Finch watched for a moment while the man searched the room. She’d left the hidden computer open for him. “You let him talk to Zelda?”

“No, of course not. You think I let my baby talk to any schmuck who wanders in? I let him see a corner of the hard drive. Just an appetizer. He has no clue.”

“You did everything but slap his face with a white glove,” Finch said. “You knew he’d show up.”

“Of course I did. It only took him this long because everybody got pulled in on the porn raids.”

“Why did you provoke him?”

She cocked her head at him. “Shiny,” she said simply. “I’m a shiny little distraction. Every minute he’s looking at me, he’s not looking for Reese. Or you.”

“We can manage Agent Donnelly.”

“I know. But I needed to vent anyhow and he walked onto my turf.” She shrugged. “The weird thing is, so many strange men have searched my apartment lately, I think I’m developing a fetish for it. Is there even a name for that?”

“Probably. Every perversion has a name.”

“Even bookcase porn.”

“Even that.” Finch watched as Agent Donnelly left the apartment – through the window. “All by himself and in and out through the window.”

“Not the behavior of a man with a search warrant in his pocket,” Christine confirmed. “So now he’s ours.”

Finch nodded. “It’s not damning in itself, but it may be useful as part of a bigger picture. Thank you.” He handed her tablet back. “I have something better.” He brought his phone out.

“Better than an FBI agent? Tell, tell.”

He brought up a photo on the phone and handed it to her. She looked at it, and then she looked at him, and then she looked back at it for a very long time. She traced her fingertips over the screen gently, reverently. “Is this him?” she finally asked. “Is this the boy?”

Finch nodded. “Facial recognition says it is.”

“He looks older.”

“The image Zelda found was from nearly three years ago. He was rescued in a raid last summer, in a ghetto in Argentina. He’s with a foster family now.” He tapped the screen to the next picture. The boy, a man and a woman, a smaller boy, two older girls, and a big dog. All smiling, except for the dog, who was possibly just slobbering on their boy.

Christine studied the new picture. Then she looked up at him again. “Random …”

“Your suspicions would wound me, if you did not know me so well.” He smiled gently. “I did not create these, I promise. They’re from Interpol, and they were ferociously hard to get. And I fully anticipate that you’ll verify them independently.”

The smile started in her eyes, spread across her face. She squealed and slid own from the window ledge, threw her arms around his neck and kissed first one cheek and then the other, and then did it again. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Then she simply hugged him. He felt her tears on his cheek.

Finch hugged her back for a moment. Then he pushed her away very gently, out to arms’ length, and gave her his handkerchief. “Dry your eyes and find your shoes. I’ll take you to lunch.”

“Oooh. Will there be chocolate?”

“For dessert. If you eat your vegetables.”

“No carrots.”

“As you wish.”

As they reached the outer office, the receptionist stood up. “Miss Fitzgerald? Mr. Capps just called. He can’t access the network …”

“That’s because I changed his password, like I asked _him_ to do two days ago.”

“He’s a senior vice president.”

Finch went ahead of her and pressed the elevator call button.

“I’ll fix it when I get back from lunch. In a couple hours. If I’m not too drunk.”

“But …”

Christine handed her the list of names Finch had given her. “When you call Sam to complain, tell him he needs to hire one of these people right away.”

 The elevator arrived and they left the receptionist sputtering in their wake.

“You know,” Finch said as the doors closed, “you’re actually quite good at that. You’d be an excellent executive. You have the right ruthless disregard.”

She just looked at him. “No broccoli, either.”

Finch laughed. “I see.”

As they left the building, a fire truck sped past, with full lights and sirens running. They both stopped, waited. Half a block behind it was an ambulance and a second fire truck. Finch watched Christine. She glanced up, to her left, to the nearest traffic camera. Then she looked at him. There were no more sirens.

“Agent Donnelly,” Finch said, “threatened you with indefinite detention under provisions of the Patriot Act. And yet that threat didn’t seem to alarm you.”

Christine looked at him steadily for a moment. “And by now I’m sure you know why.”

He nodded gravely. “They’re dangerous, Christine.”

“I know. So am I.” She considered. “Daisy’s dangerous, anyhow. And as long as they’re not sure exactly _how_ dangerous, we all co-exist peacefully.” She glanced toward the camera again. “Détente is a good thing, Random. It keeps things from being unnecessarily complicated.”

So she knows, Finch thought. Just like that. She knows about the Machine, roughly, and she knows I built it. It was, in its way, very much like watching Kevin Frey being killed – shocking only in how quiet and un-dramatic it was. He had probably known from the start that she would figure it out. Certainly he wasn’t surprised now. A bit disconcerted, but not surprised.

Her blue eyes were calm and clear, bright with the blazing intellect he’d first seen when she was nothing but, as Ingram had so poetically phrased it, a strung-out little junkie. He’d always known she’d be dangerous if she ever got clean. And she was. But not to him. Not now, anyhow.

“Détente,” he repeated softly.  And then, because there was nothing else to say, “Lunch.”

She nodded. Then she put her hand in the crook of his elbow and they walked. It was a simple gesture, classic, and less intimate than holding hands would have been. Yet it brought her close to his side. Signaled to anyone watching that they were together, at least for the moment. Brought them into step as they walked.

She knows, Finch thought, and she is not afraid to be next to me.

It was a gift beyond measure.

Two blocks later, Christine said, “I have a question.”

“Only one?”

“Oh, I have a million questions, but I don’t think you’ll answer any of them. But there’s one that gnaws at me. One I have to ask.”

“Ask,” Finch granted warily.

“About the whole Bat Signal thing.” A little impish smile played over her lips. “What’s your backup status look like?”

Relief and chagrin tumbled over each other in Finch’s mind. What was her rule? Nobody has adequate backup? Which was true, but in his case it was a deliberate choice. “It’s, uh … if I have to, I can operate from my laptop and rebuild the system in a day or two.”

“Uh-huh.” She sighed in exaggerated disappointment.

“Less redundancy means less vulnerability,” Finch pointed out.

“Uh-huh,” she repeated. “I’m betting that you don’t always have that day or two to spare. And it offends my sensibilities that a man of your talents could be wandering around the city without adequate resources.”

Finch felt his eyebrows shoot up. He’d been accused of many things, and many of them rightly, but being ‘without adequate resources’ had never been one of them. “I don’t …”

She didn’t let him finish. “So I told Zelda to recognize your voice indefinitely. And every access tab in the apartment knows your thumbprint.”

Finch stopped, absolutely startled. “What?”

Other people bumped them in passing; he drew her into a doorway with him.

“That’s why I had you shut the screens down, for the thumbprint. If you don’t have time to rebuild your system,” Christine said simply, “you don’t have time to hack into mine. If you need it and I’m not there, the keypads on the doors have a thumb scanner on the underside. Let yourself in, do what you need to do, try not to break anything.”

Christine Fitzgerald had, in the whole world, five rooms of absolutely privacy. Five rooms where she felt safe and alone. As damaged as she was, and as desperately as she needed that space to survive, she had granted him complete access to it. This was not her loaning a house key to a casual friend. It was giving him the keys to her entire life. “But … why?”

She looked toward the south, just for a moment. “I gave duct tape to people.” Finch frowned, puzzled. “Duct tape,” she repeated. “I put the rolls on my arms, as many as I could carry, and I walked around and gave pieces to people. So they could hang up their posters. Have you seen my wife, have you seen my son, have you seen my brother, I can’t find her, he never came home.” There were sparkles of tears in her eyes; she blinked them away impatiently. “Duct tape. And they were all horribly, pathetically glad to have it. And you …” She shook her head.  “You’re right, I have a million questions. And I don’t need answers to any of them.

“What you’re doing, you and John, it’s important. Maybe more important than you know. Save the cheerleader, save the world, who knows? And the other thing …” She stopped, blinked tears away again. “I need to know you’re not cut off. Not ever.”

They stood very close for a moment, silent, while the city shouted around them. Not entwined physically, though her hand still rested on his arm. Just close.

He would never absolutely _need_ her system, Finch thought; he had contingencies, alternatives. But he would use it, since she’d offered, and having it available would make things easier. The gift of her trust was far more valuable. If he had her trust he could use her mind, and that was an asset beyond calculation. With the right guidance, with a little care, she could become as valuable to him as Nathan had been …

He stopped. That was his old way of thinking. The billionaire thinking. He wasn’t that man any more. He didn’t want to think of Christine as an asset. He wanted to think of her as a friend. Friends were so very rare for him. 

Maybe he would never be rid of his old way of thinking, not entirely. He would have to work at that. But he had time.

“Thank you,” he finally managed to say. He drew her out of the doorway and they walked again, together.

As if the whole world hadn’t changed in that moment of silence, she said, “Does lettuce count?”

“As a vegetable? No. But tomatoes do.”

“Even though they’re a fruit.”

“Yes.”

“So not only are you going to inflict me with nutritional standards, Random, but you’re going to be completely arbitrary about it?”

“Yes.” Harold chuckled and put his hand over hers. Christine Fitzgerald had become everything he’d hoped she could be, all those years ago. Everything Ingram had been sure she could be.  He probably owed Nathan a hundred dollars, he realized. Maybe he’d mail it to Will, anonymously, without explanation. The idea amused him.

She knew too much, and he should have been worried. But because she’d been generous, so undemanding, he was inclined to relax. To let his guard down.

Which was probably her plan, of course, and if it was deliberate, then he needed to be doubly cautious. Only the paranoid survive.

Unless Christine’s motives were exactly what she’d said they were.  _A pretty girl brings you a cup of tea._

Old thinking, new thinking. He shook his head. Whatever happened with this bright-eyed, blue eyed woman, it was certainly going to be interesting.

 ***

 

The End

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Backing Up (Podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/814515) by [greeniron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeniron/pseuds/greeniron), [LindaO](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LindaO/pseuds/LindaO)




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